I had a time, when monkeys were featured very often in my artworks. Even now, they emerge in the story-lines. Amazing creatures! This sketchbook piece is done using graphic markers, posca and pen.
Unfortunately, I broke up and separated with my girlfriend prior to Christmas. If there is an upside, it is that moving by myself has led me going through old work I’d packed up in various boxes - not opened for years. This is just an abstract biro doodle (+ markers for colour) I doodled, while working in a stupid telephone interview job in my early 20s.
I stated with a rough pencil sketch then inked it with a brush pen and colored it with watercolor and gouache on a watercolor postcard. Reference I used was this excellent photo - https://www.pexels.com/photo/tree-wild-squirrel-monkey-97827/ photo by Mike from Pexels.com
My next monkey watercolor -well, mostly - there is a touch of acrylic paint on the eyes. I do not know why they are called red-handed - since they seem to have yellow hands.
I used brush pen and watercolors. The most challenging part was holding back on excessive pen lines to render the fur, using patches of paint instead. Although I think the background is a bit dark and there a few mistakes, I feel that learned from this.
I started with watercolor and watercolor, but then realised I needed a more opaque black and switched to gouache, acrylic and brush pens for the final touches. Most of the original looseness was lost after that, however he looks more accurate now I think.
I find backgrounds in paintings challenging so I deliberately tried to make a more complex background with this one. I sometimes have difficulty deciding when to finish and in this case maybe I overworked the background a bit too much. Still, I feel I learned a lot from the process.
Rediscovered the German language versions of Peter Gabriel’s third and fourth albums (terrific btw) and come ‘Schock den Affen’ was intrigued at how the German word for ‘monkey’ sounds a hell of a lot like orphan… of course that might just be my ears, you know?
An illustrated map of Nicaragua featuring Volcán Concepción of Ometepe and some of the country's most iconic wildlife: spider monkey, jaguar, and motmot bird.
