Hello Kitty Plays Polo!

It’s been a long while since painting about ponies and polo. Well this is because me and my boyfriend (who is a photographer) have not been to a match all this time as they kept getting cancelled due to the pandemic. Fingers crossed they can resume again soon! Meanwhile, I’ve been following Tracy Verdugo’s Abstract Mojo classes and for this lesson, Reinventing the Old, we find an old painting we’ve done and recreate it into an abstract painting!

Choosing an Old Drawing

This was an random choice as I was scrolling through my phone searching among my photographs of all my artwork. Finally, it was the Hello Kitty drawing that stood out. As a joke, I had made a sketch during one of the polo matches back in August 2018. She’s sitting on a pony having a go at the sport, how cute is that!

Loose Reproduction

In the tutorial, we are supposed to make a loose reproduction of the chosen old painting. Payne’s Grey acrylic ink was used here. To make it all look more interesting, we start “painting” the shapes with just the brush dipped in water and then apply the ink with the dropper so it spreads out with a marble-like effect. The fine details were then added with white gel pen and a cocktail stick dipped in the Payne’s Grey ink. To be honest, I love it the way it is. And so I decided not to go further for now and keep it as is.

And now I guess I chickened out with regards to doing anything else. Well I didn’t want to ruin it. I love that Japanese “sumie” painting effect which I thought was rather amazing. And with Hello Kitty originating from Japan, I find that quite a suitable match! Perhaps I’ll work on it again and add more in future but maybe not and leave as is. Why fix something that’s not broken? I will however, be repeating this exercise soon and may like to really reinvent it to an abstract painting. So watch this space!

Click here for more about Tracy Verdugo and her amazing classes!