Saturday, November 21, 2015

The Fox That Turned Into A Wolf

A coloring contest was announced in a New Zealand-based adult coloring site two months ago, around September, and it was to use the image from Kerby Rosanes' book Animorphia. I was just a newbie in coloring then, still am now, but I thought I could give it a try. So the following Sunday I got my husband, Marvin, to join me in my hunt for the book since I didn't want to download the contest image from the net. Somehow I decided that wasn't as exciting as coloring on the actual book and smelling the newly printed pages as I worked on it.

We ended up in National Bookstore (NBS) Super Branch, in Cubao. We were too early and the mall parking was still closed. Since I had to queue up to get a ticket and park my husband suggested that he'd get off ahead and buy it in NBS which was already open anyway. I let him sensing his impatience in waiting in line for parking.

It turned out buying it was more complicated than we planned. The branch's inventory reflected that they didn't have a single copy on sale. But, and this is the big discovery, the Online Store of NBS had it in stock, and that to get one immediately my husband was instructed to go to the 'non-existent' 4th or 5th floor of the building where the Online Store held office. Later that morning I tried going to that office myself and it gave me the creeps. It looked like an abandoned warehouse, and I had to walk along a dark empty hallway to meet the person in charge. Inside their office was an entirely different story, the ladies were very accommodating and showed me all the new titles they just acquired and were about to put up online straight from their delivery boxes. Had so much fun looking through the stocks, but decided in the end that Animorphia seemed already too much to handle for a beginner and so walked away with only that title to purchase.

Getting started on coloring the fox was not easy since I had to decide whether it was a fox or a wolf. The contest said "color the wolf", but in the comments below was a debate on whether it was a fox or a wolf. Some said its ears were too big to be a wolf's ears, and all those details they brought up. I decided to follow the contest instructions and tweaked the face to make it look more like the fox in my peg.
I used Faber-Castell watercolour pencils for the face, black gel pens for the fine hair on the head, and Colleen pencils overall.  





In coloring the little goblins I'm pretty sure I referred to the color wheel in my book for a color scheme. I will look that up later and include it in this blog. Meantime, let's just say it's a particular scheme which I didn't think up.

As I wasn't very keen on working on the background because of my inexperience in making one I thought I'd leave it white. But my husband urged me to put some color because, to him, it looked unfinished. I wanted a moon but hesitated on using a compass, so I took a medium sized plate from the dish rack and traced it. I left it white. I chose the lilac shade for the night sky and colored four layers of it using light, even strokes. Very amateurish, but I was quite satisfied.

The piece didn't win, I wasn't expecting it to. But the face of the wolf earned some praises. That was enough to keep me going with Animorphia, by far one of my favorite books to color.

2 comments:

  1. I have this book myself, and I colored this page like a fox. I have to admit though, I like yours a lot better! You should've one that contest!

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