A Mynah Production

Birthday Postcard

   Recently I had done a simple sketch on a painted background that, to my amazement, many have liked. I thought that I was being "lazy" by not sketching the background as well, but now that I look at it again, the color does help to pull you in. This sketch/painting that I did, was used on three different swap projects of mine. You might have seen the "hand template" with the fish on blue/green background? I've also done it on a small box that I sent through the mail, as you can see below...

The third project I used this style on, was on a birthday postcard. Here's the progression on how it came about. 

I'm using a sturdy paper, Canson's 140lb cold press watercolor paper. I then dropped some blue acrylic paint down, straight from the bottle. (I'm using the cheap stuff!) With one of those fake credit cards that you get in your junk mail. I'm scraping the paint across the paper, to cover. Once I have gotten the area completely covered, I drop in some light green. this time I'm not trying to cover the paper completely. I just want streaks of this color. Using my last color of choice, yellow, I scrape the color across.... and although all the paint is wet, I try to scrape this color as if it looks dry brushed. (Does that make sense?)

My friends can tell you, that I've drawn a lot of fish! So, I didn't need to use pencil to sketch. I used a fine tipped Sharpie, to draw in the simple lines of the fish. Along the top of the the fish and near its side fin, I hastily added some cross hatching. Filled in the eye, again with sharpie, then put a few glints in the eye with a Uni-ball Signo pen. Gently, so I don't move the background color around, I used a violet colored water color for shading. When it is all dry, I streaked some more white to areas that I think would have a shine to a fish. In the last picture above, you can see that I stenciled in the word "fishy," I like it to go off the edge of the paper. Water drops were also added. (If you go back a couple of post, you can see how water droplets are done.) 

My final touches are made with a Sakura Stardust pen. I made rays come out of the fish and I stippled in some sparkle. The "9" is done with a gold Sakura gelly Roll pen..... and lately I've been aging the edges of my paper. Here I'm using "Black Soot" Distress Ink.

Here is the finished work.....