Decided to pull away from digital art for the time being because I miss making traditional art, especially with ink. Couldn’t find my black ink pen though — still can’t find it as I am writing this now — so decided to try with the blue ink pen instead.
Thought I’d do an intimate silhouette piece. Was listening to Thomas Newman’s ‘A Bit of Tin’ from his ‘1917’ film soundtrack and had this intimate image in mind, so I went right into it, outlining the silhouettes of two men/boys standing by the window, holding each other.
For this week, I decided to step back a little. Inspiration for the past week had not been all that great. There was an idea for an original piece, but I couldn’t execute it all that well, and found that I was forcing myself to make it work — which was something that I really didn’t want to do, because that is how one gets uninspired art.
So instead of trying to conceive of something completely new, I thought I’d just settle for a simple task: to pick a picture from old stash of travel photos to draw. And the first one to catch my eye was this one, a view of the Krämerbrücke in Erfurt as seen through the windows of one of countless churches in the area.
Photo reference, taken in 2017
The photo reminds me of a picture I have drawn of another German city I had been to, Dresden, based on yet another reference photo I had taken around the same time as this one. It was more or less a similar picture, an elevated view of one particular cobblestone street of the town — one near or on a local landmark — flanked between two rows of old shop houses. Maybe for the upcoming midweek inspiration, I will upload that picture of Dresden I drew.
Anyways, enough about that. Here is the final picture, in ink. I didn’t want to do a coloured pencil piece this time because I didn’t have the energy to think of the colours. This motivated me to try shading entirely with ink — something which I rarely do because I lack the confidence in it. Inking in outlines are fine, but shading with ink is a very different ballpark. For one, the strokes are permanent, so there is no turning back once they have been drawn in, and were I not to be careful, I could mess the piece up unintentionally. So this normally forces me into a mental position where I would lock everything out and channel my energy to putting intentionality into my strokes, which gets quite meditative, especially with Lo-Fi music playing in the background.
A few colleagues who were into TikTok played me this new song recently going viral on the app that sounded kind of cute and they went crazy over it. We ended up trying to look for the song — based on very inaccurate lyrics, as shown in the strip. We eventually found out where it was from: a Russian commercial for Honey Loops. Who knew?
Things got a bit worse with the pandemic here in Malaysia, so we’ve been urged to get ourselves registered into apps to keep track of our movements, ‘MySejahtera’ included. The latter had been a challenge to get into, mostly seemingly because of the great deal of traffic going into that site. Mom was having some troubles, so we had to help her with the process several times. Ain’t easy, but we got things settled.
LOVE YA, MOM!
Anyways, my first comic strip. Greatly inspired by the numerous Instagram and Tumblr artists I follow and admire, who do this in between their bigger pieces, seemingly as a form of stress relief or pure self-expression.
Monastic life intrigues me, and not too long ago, I was interested in the lifestyle of Buddhist monks, most notably Shaolin monks. I liked (and still like) to daydream myself as one, donning the uniform, embracing the discipline and the mindfulness, performing meditation… and show off my numerous kungfu moves.
Part 1: Pencil sketch
I just thought that I’d finally put it down on paper.
A personal exploration of autism from a brother’s perspective, including family relationships, philosophy, neuroscience, mental health history and ethics
Explore, discover and experience the world through Meery's Eye. Off the beat budget traveler. Explore places, cultural and heritage. Sustainable trotter.
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.am i doing this right? 