Art Attack! #34: It's a Panda-emic! 😷

Hey Hive!

We're back again with another Art Attack! If you're new to the series, this is where I share my paintings and the process behind them. A behind-the-scenes look at my artwork, if you will. This is not to say that I'm very good at art, or that I'm a professional in any way. In fact this is the opposite, and serves as a reminder to how I first started, and lets me track my progress too!

So back in March, I got together with a couple friends and we had our first art jamming session! Two of us are really into art and she said we should do a collab together! I was really flattered when she suggested that because she has been drawing ever since I've known her and I've only just gotten into art a couple years ago. But regardless, we decided to work on a piece together at our friend's house!

Our art styles are actually really different. If you've kept up with this series you'd know that I like a lot of colour, and more cute-sy designs, while Kai's art style is more realistic black and white. So a collab between the both of us should prove to be interesting.

But obviously we couldn't both draw on the same piece at the same time, so she worked on this:

I added the cats btw. She really liked how I drew my neko atsume piece so she suggested that I add a lot of cats to her unicorn.

And while waiting, she said I should work on another piece we could do. I was stumped for ideas and with the virus just getting out into the news and while people were panic buying and stuff, Kai suggested I draw something related to the pandemic.

And that's exactly what I did!

Okay so I know it's not really a pun, but I came up with a pandamonium pun long ago and wanted to work it in somehow. And Kai thought it was funny so I just went with it.

The design of the pandas was inspired by this picture I found from teeturtle btw. Their characters are always so cute and I like their designs a lot.

Source: TeeTurtle

So after I sketched and outlined it, I suggested the two of them colour the pandas. Averyn initially didn't want to, since she said she's not as artistically inclined as us, but we reassured her saying everyone can do art. And since she was only colouring the panda it's basically just black and grey.

She had crayola crayons and I thought it'd be cool to mix the mediums together since I always work with watercolours so I told her to just go for it!

Kai wanted to try using watercolours since she's never painted before so I told her to try painting the red panda.

And I think both of them did a fantastic job! Even the shadows and lighting was really well done.

I then finished it off with painting the background. I made it simple and light since I wanted the pandas to be the main focus.

I didn't want it to be all green so I tried painting the ground brown but unfortunately, I remembered that the paper I was using is not very water-absorbent so the corner got fuzzy, unfortunately. But we'll just pretend that it looks like real dirt.

The PS stands for Paw Sanitiser btw.

After that I decided to add some bamboo in the background like the original picture from TeeTurtle so that it wouldn't look so plain. I wasn't really sure how to paint bamboo though, so it might've looked a little weird. But oh well.

I added some details to give the bamboo at the front some definition, thinking it would help make it look better. But I'm not sure if that made any difference.

I actually had to finish this up at home because we ran a little late. But I'm glad I managed to finish this piece. And it was so much fun creating art together! Truly a great first pArty. Not long after that, we entered lockdown so I'm glad we at least got to enjoy this together.

Btw, remember to mask up and stay safe!

Thanks so much for reading!