During our road trip along Spain I hope to have some time to get creative with painting too! I brought along my mini sketchbook, Strathmore’s Visual Journal, along with some markers, Sennelier’s mini set of watercolor pans, small tin of aquarelle pencils, mechanical pencil, eraser and brush pens in which you can fill water. Then of course we always have the iPad! I didn’t forget to pack my Apple Pencil too thankfully. And speaking of which… I would like to share another digital painting I made before leaving!
Start with Bunny!
I am indeed still following Maurizio de Angelis’ on-line courses for Procreate. For the next chapter, we take a break from air-brush painting during which he introduces colored pencils! Quite straight forward. I started with a brown background and just began drawing and coloring my bunny white as if I were using an actual colored pencil. Then I added another layer and drew one green leaf, followed by another layer for another leaf but in a lighter green.
Add the Teddy!
Now this was just some practice with colored pencils and hence I was aimlessly drawing with no plans. After the bunny, I just added some orange carrots. And now what’s next? I just imagined the next “logical” step would be a teddy! They always somehow come in hand in hand, don’t they? Since the background was already brown, I decided to color Teddy pink instead of the usual brown. Bunny was then shifted to the side and positioned diagonally for better composition. And since I was in a cute mood, I went and changed the background to cornflower blue!
Further Changes
And now we’re talking! The leaves were duplicated using copy and paste then scattered about. Following that, I enlarged bunny and teddy and repositioned the subjects including the carrots! I was certainly happy with the composition but felt the back could be more dynamic. Once again, I changed the background and incorporated some clouds (pre-set effects) in bright violet. Almost there!
Adding Details
After drawing in the green carrot tops, I added the eyes. This was a toss up between having eyes for cuteness or skipping them altogether for a more abstract effect. As a compromise, I merely dotted them in rather than make my usual full “manga” eyes. Those button eyes are now so cute! And rather than have them black or brown, I colored bunny’s grey and teddy’s yellow, both along with eyelashes. There, it’s now kawaii and abstract at the same time!
And what fun that was! One of the things I enjoy about digital art is being able to easily alter my work when it suits me, ie background, color and composition. Plus I love the choice of mediums and brushes the app comes with. It’s never the same as the real paintings of course, but occasionally it is a wonderful tool to play around with especially when traveling minimally. Hopefully I will then have a chance to paint digitally during our trip, so let’s see what othrt kawaii creations we can come up with!
My Kawaii Quarter 