Penguin Cartoon on Hummingbird Page
W&N Markers on Moleskine WC journal
Yesterday when I painted the hummingbird I placed him to the right because of the direction his head pointed. I wanted him pointing at the other painting on the page. I had no idea how well this would work till I finished the penguins cartoon from oldrockchick's WDE photographs. By accident, it looks like he's reading the caption and startled by what the penguins are doing!
The birds came up with this. I just drew it. I looked at the photo and the caption just popped into my mind - one of them folding his head back down to hide it in the middle of his back as if embarrassed, the other one putting his beak up all snobby as if to say "I'm not with him." I realized as I sketched it that this was just mutual, they had the same moment in different ways!
Sometimes a good idea doesn't come out perfect. There's a botch in the cartoon where an area of ground got too dark and the Moleskine paper let me lift it more or less to a better value, but also damaged the paper surface. Now I know not to scrub and lift these watercolor markers on Moleskine watercolor paper. Every painting is an experiment. Even failed trials are worth learning from.
But if I were going to publish the cartoon I would either clean it up in GIMP or I'd redraw it from this version. That's fine. Call it a preliminary painting and move on. That's what journals and sketchbooks are for!
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