King’s Day

A blast from the past painting from 2018 which for some reason I didn’t blog about. Today is Koningsdag, which is King’s Day, a national holiday in the Netherlands. That’s right, it’s King Willem-Alexander’s birthday! It’s normally a huge party on the streets, but this year sadly subdued with big gatherings forbidden amidst the COVID-19 outbreak. So a little tribute to the royals today during these difficult times.

The Plan

Wow, I was so determined to make this painting perfect that I made my little plan in my humble sketchbook! The plan was the Dutch flag in the background followed by a kawaii portrayal of the royal family, King and Queen with their three princess daughters! Back in the days, I had less confidence with painting, was more hung up with perfection and just had to plan carefully the small details including even what paint to use. Now I am more spontaneous and relaxed.

The Painting

I used acrylic paint for this. First the flag. I have most likely used Dylusions paint or even Amsterdam acrylics as I was just starting out with painting in acrylic!

Then I played down the colours by briskly brushing over them with white gesso. Graphite pencil sketch followed once gesso was dry. And now the kawaii drawing begins! A bit of modelling paste was spread on the crowns. And here comes the gold paint! I believe it was Reeves acrylic, my first set of metallic shades.

Kawaii Royals

The rest of the painting ensued using just acrylic. At the time, I didn’t have any acrylic markers or gel pens and simply made do with the simplest things I already had. The small details like the lashes and the eyes though were likely to be my Faber-Castell’s Pitt Artist markers with the whites of the eyes carefully dotted in with white acrylic. And still the result is so kawaii!

I’ve got no idea as to why I hadn’t blogged about this painting! Perhaps I was afraid that the painting would be regarded as a caricature and hence disrespectful which was not my intention of course. It is meant to be innocently kawaii, and now I am not ashamed to share it. I’ve even posted it on Facebook back then so why not write about it now? It’s too sweet and cute not to!