Sigh. Ya all remember that scratch art thing from Daiso I talked about previously? And I said that two of the boxes didn’t come with the bamboo sticks to scratch? Well. I was wrong. I noticed today that they had sticks, but it’s stuck on the side of the box and I didn’t look at *that* side of the box and completely missed it. Instead I was rattling the box around and didn’t hear anything, and didn’t see any mention of the sticks on the box either so I assume there were none… But well. I found the sticks on both boxes and… Yeah. One of the is mouldy already. Sigh. The weather here. I’m pretty sure it’s not my room this time since the other sticks are fine and it’s only been a week or so since I bought this… From my experience it would take much longer to get to this stage. But yeah. Goodbye stick. Threw it away. I have enough spores flying around my room as it is!
Here they are… The fanart I’ve been working on… Well rather than fanart… It’s more like, I picked twosetviolin as reference photos?
Finished this piece this morning… Let’s start off on a strong note and go with my latest and best work thus far… Eddy in colorpencil. Matching skin tones with color pencil (or maybe with any medium) is hard! The mask was much easier to draw in comparision… But well it’s not exactly color accurate too. Overall the colors are more saturated than the original… But not too bad I guess. He’s tilting his head quite a bit in the photo, which doesn’t seem to be captured here… The specs are so freaking hard to draw… I gave up trying to color match it and… Yeah… I didn’t realise how off the shape was till it’s too late. I mean. It’s one thing if it doesn’t match the reference. It’s another that the left and right does doesn’t match each other *facepalm*. Oh wells. Ya live and ya learn. Better luck to me next time… Maybe I’ll have a better idea how to blot out the shape of fragile tiny things like frames better next time. (The left ear is also a bit weird, but not as weird as the glasses…)
Considering that this is pretty much the 2nd time in my entire life that I’ve done a color pencil drawing (the first one I drew was an apple), I’m very, very happy with the results. Used the gel pen for some spots on the glasses, and the eyes because at the last min I messed up the blending… I didn’t like how the gel pen looks when it went down, but it looks ok in the photo and looking at it in person again now after half a day, I’m fine with it too.
One mistake I made this time was doing the draft in pencil… Should have used my erasable prismacolor pencils dangit! The pencil left marks and though it’s fine in many areas… The glasses which I would have preferred to remain say… White or yellow, ended up being a bit grey because of the pencil marks… Oh wells. Again, ya live and ya learn!
Going back in time we have another sketch of Eddy… This time in pencil. Just a quick sketch this time. I thought Eddy looked pretty gangster squating like that, plus it was a good challenge. I’ve hardly draw any full body sketches, pretty much just my favourite scientist in a lab coat thing that I default to, and even then it’s just standing up, and many a times I omit the shoes because I can’t draw them properly. I can only draw sideways shoes, and I’ve tried and failed to draw shoes in other angles. So this time the challenge was to draw a squating human, plus front on shoes. I did also try to look at the light and shading… But overall I didn’t put too much effort into those… I wanted to finish it off quickly and be done with it, and move on to learning new things with a new piece, and that was what I did. Finished this off in one sitting, maybe 2 hours or less? I don’t remember any more. But that is significantly lesser than the color pencil. That took me like two weeks. Obviously I wasn’t working on it everyday… But it probably took 10 hours? Maybe more? To finish that color pencil piece.
Finally we have the very first portait I tried to draw, ever. In pencil. It’s also one of the first few times I tried to shade properly. I think the proportions and everything looks pretty decent… Like… It looks like Brett.. Though the smile/grimace is a bit weird. In my defence, his smile in that insta photo *IS* a bit weird/awkward… Which was why I chose to draw that in the first place. Kinda cute, if you’d to ask me. I did cheat and turn the color photo into black and white and used that as reference so it’s easier to see the shading.
To think that 4 years ago I was only capable of doing this… Lol.
I was scrolling through my instagram accounts just now and realised that I’ve really not done much calligraphy for very long now. The last time I actually ‘practiced’ calligraphy was like 3-4 years ago… I started earnestly doing a bit of brush calligraphy daily when I was in my previous job, and I’ve been in my current job for almost 4 years now. I did continue for a little while when I switch to my current job… And then I did do like a doodle a day for a while, but those are really just quick, childish doodles, and nothing that I truly put much effort into. Finally picking it up again after stopping for so long.
I’ve been doing quite a bit of drawing lately. Not ready to share them yet… But maybe after I finish this color pencil piece I’ve been working on for a while now. Just taking it slowly and doing a little each week. I’ll show ya all when it’s done, I promise!
Meanwhile… Went to Daiso today and found they have a ton of scratch art sheets… I got myself 4 packs… Yeah 4. But I’ll do them, I promise! In fact I’ve already done one!
Tokyo bay night scene, featuring the rainbow brigde and Tokyo tower. Ahhh… I did go to the rainbow bridge in Tokyo last time, but I did see it from afar from Odaiba, when I went to Fuji terebi. Ahhh… I miss Japan. Why are they still NOT opening up? T.T
But well, in case you don’t know what scratch art is… You basically buy scratch sheets that are like colored paper or hologram/foil/whatever paper that’s coated with this black stuff, and scratching away the black stuff reveals the color (foil etc) paper underneath. So these packs from daiso seems to all be packs of 4 sheets, with them being 2 foil/hologram and 2 colored sheets. They have designs printed onto the sheets in white already so you know where to scratch off. But of course the entire area underneath is colored/foiled so you can add on to the design however you like.
Of course you can buy scratch sheets that are blank and make your own unique pattern, and I did get two boxes of post-it squares sized scratch sheets.. But those are just plain old rainbow color underneath, not fancy foil/hologram.
But yes, back to these Daiso scratch art packs. It’s great fun, and kept me very entertained for just 53 cents thereabout. It’s like $2.14 per pack of 4 designs and I did one tonight… Some packs come with the bamboo pen thing to scratch away the designs but some don’t, so you might want to pick up at least a pack that comes with the bamboo pen just for the convience. No need to fret over what to use and all. (Most of the packs I saw does come with the pen though.) It’s pretty mindless, you just trace over the lines, and maybe thicken some lines, fill in some areas etc… It’s even more mindless than plain old coloring. Not need to think about what color to use, the shading, making it look pretty etc… Just scratch the dang thing away. It’s engaging enough to keep you entertained for a while, but doesn’t take FOREVER unlike diamond painting… A good in between for sure. Definitely very calming and stress relieving… Would definitely recommend!
