Month: June 2018

Reproduction of Moebius’ ‘Cavalcadeur à sept pattes’

‘La faune de Mars’ by Moebius is full of wonderful creatures. I am fond of one in particular: ‘Cavalcadeur à sept pattes’:
Reference illustration showing a seven-legged animal that looks like a mix of a dinosaur, a camel and a lizard. It is mounted by a man that looks really small in comparison. The landscape is like a desert.
By the look of the book, I am pretty sure the artist’s original book was a Canson One Art Book. Hardbound, 10,2 x 15,2 cm, 98 sheets. Exactly like the one I have, which still has a few blank pages. So I sketched the cavalcadeur (this invented word translates as ‘stampeder’) and marked the outline with a thin (0.05 or 0.1 mm) Uni-ball Pin pen:
Outline in thin black ink of my version
The back of the book has a coloured version of it so I didn’t have to make up colours when I painted it with watercolor. I was quite pleased with the final look:
Watercolour applied

Masai Mara Antelopes at sunset

Vladimir went to Kenya a few years ago and took many beautiful pictures. I came across this one last December, as he had included it in a book he had made as a Christmas gift for Adrien.
The reference photo: four antelopes on bare flat ground against a big low sun

It looked both so graphically appealing and simple that I wanted to try me hand on it. I sketched it and prepared a round shape in masking tape:
Very rough pencil sketch and masking tape around the sheet and a round piece of masking tap in the middle

Using burnt sienna, yellow ochre and lamp black, I painted the golden sky, the ground and vegetation and the thin clouds:
Ground and weeds painted with burnt sienna, yellow ochre and lamp black, yellow ochre for the golden sky, and some burnt sienna for the clouds

For the antelopes and to darken further the ground and vegetation, I added black to my palette (apparently I botched the thicket on the left in the process, and had to turn it into a mound):
I darkened the ground and painted the antelopes silhouettes with burnt sienna and black

I removed the tape. Here is the resulting painting that occupies some of the 21×13 cm page of a Moleskin watercolor book:
Masking tape removed, date and signature applied in think black letters

I learned that the paper of this book isn’t thick enough for too much paint/water, and that it was too ambitious to render the light on the ground and around the animal immediately under the sun. At least, it’s still graphically appealing!

Other work from late December 2017

I doodled a few Moebius’ figures to test how badly black ink bleeds against alcoholic ink. Maybe I didn’t let it dry enough, but the Uni-ball pin pens supposedly don’t bleed but they did:
Two sketches of caped characters, one standing from behind, another in the water pushing a skiff
Sketch of a levitating character with spread out arms, dressed in a long billowy dark blue robe, a headdress that looks like antlers, and two large orbs at the ears.
A bit frustrated, I continued with a Moebius’ figure of a queen in heaven, part of an illustration of Dante’s Divine Comedy, but this time I used a Pentel Brushpen and watercolor:
Black ink and coloured alcohol markers drawing of a madonna on clouds with joined hands, wearing a crown and a halo full of stars
This one I liked doing very much! I used a Black ink Pentel Brushpen for the black background and a white Posca pen for the zebra:
Zebra painted in white over a black rectangle

Vieux Nice (opus 1)

I spent a dozen hours or so, spread over three days, on a painting I did for a friend who loves city scenes that capture the ‘local taste’, the rhythms of balconies, and the way buildings in some Riviera towns cascade into each other.

I chose a view of the Old Nice, near the Cours Saleya, that featured colourful façades, a bell tower, tree tops and the iconic blue window blinds.

2B pencil sketch:
Pencil sketch on a large square watercolour sheet on a table in front of my iphone showing the reference photo

Then I did the outline using a 0.05 mm black Uni-ball Pin pen, and delimited the space with masking tape (glittery black was all I had –classy!):
Thin outline in black ink and tape at the top and bottom

Painting with shades of yellow, ochre, blue:
Watercolour nearly finished with the facades painted yellow and ochre, the window blinds painted blue, the bell tower painted with rainbow colours

Once the red and green are in, this is done. Here is the resulting 30×20 cm watercolor:
Finished watercolour, tape removed, signature and date added in white at the bottom right

Framed and ready to ship! (30×40 cm)
Finished watercolour framed in white wood