One of the most elaborate painting i ever did while i was venturing into acrylic few months ago. This was a painting i did for my #ramadhansketchchallenge where i did one painting every day for a month of Ramadhan and this one is the longest time i took for one piece. It took me nearly 5 hours non-stop, in which a long time for me as all my sketches usually take from 10 to 50 minutes top. Even for this one, i did not intend to do a hyper-realism but rather am impression of the Songket details.
The thumbnails of the whole 29 days painting.
Im going to just focus on this one particular painting of the Malaysian traditional fabric called the Songket. If you want me to highlight on any specific painting, please let me know. :)
Songket: Textile that is uniquely Malaysian that is handmade combining metallic threads interwoven with silk or cotton, that is worn by royalties and malay warriors alike. [source: http://www.karyaneka.com.my/english/songket.html]
This was drawn in a watercolour sketchbook from http://theperfectsketchbook.com/ that use rough grain Fabriano 300gsm Watercolour paper with Windsor and Newton Acrylic paints.
I masked the border of the drawing to get a crisps border line around the drawing, sketch the rough form for the basis of the painting and them put the base colour as the background to work with.
When the background paint dried, i immediately started right up with the details from one spot to another. and this is the most tedious part.
few years later......
..the picture is getting clearer and got me excited. mind you i have to do every stroke of the silver thread to get the impression of them shining..and i've got to sprint for the last final details because any longer i might actually lose interest in finishing it...
...and finally in the 5th hour, voila! :)
p/s : removing the tapes were the most satisfying feeling of the whole process ;)
