The Yellow Supra

The weekend before the last, we embarked on a road trip to Germany and Austria with my boyfriend’s new car! It’s the Toyota Supra, his new toy, which he treasures and yet enjoys. What makes the car special is that not only is it a fast sports car, it is also in limited production. Furthermore, it is yellow which makes it even more rare. So away we drove to Großglockner, Austria’s highest point at 3798 meters, narrowly beating Mt. Fuji ‘s 3776 meters in Japan! And of course I wanted to document our lovely trip on my sketchbook…

Pencil Sketch

So on a two-page spread of Strathmore’s mixed media sketchbook, I made a kawaii pencil sketch of us in the Supra! Here we are drawn in three different positions climbing up a fictional mountain with a castle on top. Whilst travelling across Germany and Austria, I noticed quite a few castles or churches high up in the mountains and was awed by them. And of course we came across lots of sheep and cows too! And the flowers, so beautiful too, mostly in purple and yellow.

Painting it Pretty

I customarily paint the background first, and this was a great opportunity to use up the leftover tubes of Holbein’s pastel color watercolors which had been dried up in the ceramic dish: blue, grey and green. For much of the rest, I went for gouache, also by Holbein’s, not to be confused with its Acryla range which is actually acrylic-based. Both do give same matte chalky finish, though, which was perfect as I wanted to enhance the vivid colors. Once all colored in, I just added some fine details with white and black gel pens where needed. How cute!

It is not often that I get to paint in gouache, and I am pleased with the result. The colors certainly pop out as gouache is matte and opaque, great for anime illustrations like this. Loving how the yellow car looks so distinct. Pity this medium is rarely used compared to say watercolor and acrylic, as I think it deserves to be used more often. Looking forward to painting more with it soon!