2025 Lunar New Year of The Snake

 

Deepavali 2024

 

The festival of light is nowadays celebrated with fireworks.

April 2024 Festivities

This year 10 April 2024 was the Festival of Eid after the month of Ramadan. A few days later on 13 April 2024 it was Tamil Hindu/Sinhala Buddhist New Year.

Both greetings were drawn in a loose sketchy style.

Birth of the Year of The Dragon- two artworks from one

The Gregorian calendar year commenced 1 January 2024. The Lunar/Chinese New Year commenced 10 February 2024. In the past I have done separate artworks for both events. This time I decided to use one base concept to create both artworks. As this is the Chinese Zodiac Year of the Dragon, I chose to depict a baby dragon emerging from its egg. So at the end of December 2023, I created both artworks. Published the 2024 one for the 1 Jan 2024 date and published the Chinese New Year one on 9 Jan 2024.

No. 1-This is the base line artwork drawn by hand, ink on paper, scanned into Photoshop.

No. 2-The base artwork was coloured as above in Photoshop and saved.

No. 3- From that base artwork, this one was further developed in Photoshop as final artwork for the Gregorian New Year and published first.

No. 4- Going back to the saved base artwork (No. 2), this one was further developed in Photoshop as final artwork for the Chinese New Year and published for that event. Auspicious red colour background, orange sparkles and Chinese motif border.

Both No. 3 and No. 4 were completed at the same time, only publication was staggered.

As a side note, our first born was born in a dragon year too, so it has a special meaning for us.

The Making of The 20th Century Fox

 You may have seen my final artwork on this. The images below show you how it was created from concept thumbnail to pencil drawing (19 January 2024 evening) to ink trace on tracing paper,scan into Adobe Photoshop and colouring via various layers on 20 January 2024 afternoon.

A Google Image of the actual 20th Century Fox logo was used as reference as can be seen from some of the screenshots.

Concept thumbnail

Pencil drawing. 3B on white paper.

Trace over with brown felt tip pen 0.5mm

Checking the tracing by inserting a white sheet below.

Scan into Photoshop.

Adjusting brightness and contrast settings.

Black colour fill.

Fox body fill.

Fox costume fill.

Background fill.

Colouring other elements.

Adding shade for a 3D effect.

Colouring the sky. Airbrush tool on a new layer

Adding clouds on new layer.

Shading his shades on new layer.

Adjusting opacity of the shades.

Adding the searchlights on new layer using white fill.

Adjusting the opacity to created the searchlight effect.

Done. So I thought. Oops forgot to light his cigarette!

Done. Final artwork. Saved in JPEG format

The 20th Century Fox

 

For over 80 years, 20th Century was one of the major American film studios. It was formed in 1935 as Twentieth Century-Fox Film Corporation by the merger of Fox Film and Twentieth Century Pictures,

It is presently owned by Disney.

The opening logo with the drum roll and fanfare has graced many hit moves like, Planet of the Apes,Star Wars and Titanic.

TV shows produced by the studio include M*A*S*H, Batman, Green Hornet and Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, The Fall Guy etc.

As a kid growing up and watching these movies and TV shows, I loved the opening logo as much as the actual entertainment . The name always intrigued me. This artwork is a tribute to that studio with Mr. Fox dressed in the style of the movie producers of the 1970s.

Pongal Greeting card

 This year a mixture of hand drawn and coloured by hand on tracing paper, scanned into and enhanced on Adobe Photoshop.