Hope your Christmas was enjoyable despite the current situation! The few days following, I decided to chill a bit. Yet I felt the urge to paint especially since I have more time now. We are in limbo at the moment with the renovation of the new house so I’m not able to unpack more of my stuff from the move and put them away. Plus with the stricter lockdown and cold weather there is not anywhere really to go. Great time to get lazy and stay warm inside!
Hello Kitty Presents
So here I am showing you my Christmas presents. Actually most were from and to myself haha! I’m such a huge Hello Kitty fan so decided during these difficult times, I should be kind to myself and deserve some treats! So whenever packages arrived I would place them under the tree and open them on Christmas day. I know, what am I like! So some of the gifts all featuring Hello Kitty include sets of Tomica toy cars, a pair of porcelain Maneki Neko lucky cats, label maker and a pair of plastic teapots for kids (this one from my BF who says I could use to decorate my art studio).
Let’s Draw About It!
And I somehow came up with this idea of making a cute painting of them in a medley. They were firstly sketched on my Strathmore Visual Journal Sketchbook for Watercolors.
Beginning to Paint
First let’s paint the background. It’s my first time using Dr. Ph Martins Radiant Concentrated Water Color. Although a similar concept to the Hydrus Liquid Watercolor by the same brand, the colours are more, well as the name suggests, vibrant. Scarlet was used for the background. Then for the objects, I went for the leftover watercolor paints that were sitting in my mixing dish ready to be used up: green, brown, ochre yellow all by Holbein.
Change of Background
I was initially aiming for a Christmas color like red which would have been a change as I use green in my work a lot. However I realized it wasn’t a good idea because Hello Kitty’s bow is also red! Although I did try making my ribbons pink (Gansai Tambi fluorescent pink). many of the Hello Kitty such as the lucky cat suit red better. Too much red overkill! So I thought I’d take the risk by experimenting with covering the red background with… blue! The Vibrant Water Color range was used in True Blue. And rather than resulting with a mud of purple, it was a pleasant surprise to see how well it worked! I love how you can still see a hint of red underneath, like a transparent film of blue just lightly coated on top.
Painting with the Rest…
Rather than leave Hello Kitty unpainted to leave it white, I felt a bit of something could be added. How about something iridescent or pearly? Here I went for Gansai Tambi’s metallic range choosing White Gold. I also glazed the beer glasses (boyfriend’s present to himself) with some Champagne Gold. Then the rest of the painting fell into place as I switched to gouache in Metallic Green, Scarlet and pink. Finer details like the eyes, noses and Maneki Neko bells were filled in with black, yellow or gold gel pens whichever applied. And now!!
Just a fun post-Christmas chill-out painting. It was also a good chance to try out new products again namely the Vibrant liquid Water Color. From that I was then able to experiment with combining colors and create a cool-looking background. And now my cute Hello Kitty presents really pop out with joy!
My Kawaii Quarter 