DRAWING IDEA - (3) Rabbit Habit using Watercolor

    Hello everyone, welcome to my blog. This time, I will share my experience and work process on one of my drawing ideas, Rabbit Habit. Here I used pencil and watercolor for the art piece. To start working on this drawing idea, I imagined what the startled rabbit should look like and wrote down the description on paper, then used that to write a short event like a story. This story follows the event of my previous post on Village Market.

The story goes like this :

    After reaching the local guild office, I went to the quest board and searched for a quest that fitted my level and could be done quickly. At that place, I found a few requests for hunting, foraging, and delivery according to my capability, then took them to the receptionist to register.

    First, I did the delivery quest that asked me to deliver the collected berries from the guild office to a local shop, then went towards the forest for foraging and hunting. The foraging quest asked to collect some edible mushrooms, and the hunting quest asked for 3 Wabock birds. These birds look like small terror birds that hunt in a pack, are very aggressive, and breed quickly due to magic. They frequently attack local farm animals, small pets, and even people sometimes. That's why there are frequent hunting quests for them. Also, they are a local delicacy, so the food market always has a demand for them, but the hunting limit has been set by the guild to be a maximum of 6 per person per week to prevent over-hunting and dis-balance in the forest. After a few hours, I completed the tasks and left for the guild to take the rewards. It was almost evening when I arrived at the guild, and after taking the quest payments, I returned to the inn. Then ate dinner, went to my room, and fell asleep.

    Around 7 am, I woke up, went to the nearby well outside, and freshened up. Then went inside the inn, ordered a cup of black tea, and took it to my room. I put the cup on the small table, then opened the window that luckily did not make the creaking noise after the innkeeper fixed it and sat on the stool. As I was going to take a sip from the cup, suddenly a familiar sound, THUD, came from outside. I became cautious and thought I shall definitely find out the identity of the sound source that nearly gave me a panic attack mid-night.Then slowly and steadily, I got up and peeked out the window and what I saw was really unexpected. It wasn't a ferocious cunning predator but was a startled white rabbit.

    There I saw a basket, half-filled with vegetables lying on the ground, and out of all, only the big carrot with a bite-sized chunk missing was lying in front of the rabbit. The rabbit may have been startled cause it could have sensed that I was looking at it. As the rabbit realized that I wasn't doing any harm, it continued to eat the carrot. After finishing the carrot, it went near the fallen basket and picked another carrot in its mouth. Then it looked here and there for a few seconds and ran away. It seems like the rabbit's quota was done for the day. And I also finished my morning tea while enjoying the show, then I thought about returning to my world as lots of work was pending there and started packing my things.

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WORKING PROCESS OF DRAWING IDEA - (3) Rabbit Habit using Watercolor :

Here is the step-wise procedure of how I did the painting:

Step 1

Finding References

I searched the internet for a few rabbit/bunny photos in different poses matching the startled and cautious expression I have described in my short story. For the outside scene, I remembered the old rental house's backyard where I used to stay and then searched the internet to find something similar.

Step 2:

Sketching

Using a pencil, I drew the outline of the subjects on paper by watching the references in this step.

 

 

Step 3:

First Color Layer

After finishing the sketch, I wetted the paper surface to apply a light base color to every subject. Then let it dry completely.

 

Step 4:

Second Color Layer

In this step, I applied more saturated colors using the wet on dry method to create more differences between the subjects. Then introduced more details to the ground by adding grasses and then made the bushy texture in the back of the fence.

 

Step 5:

Third Color Layer

Again in this step, I repeated the same but with a darker color value to create an ambiance and thus create a differentiable perspective.

 

Step 6:

Final Color Layer

Finally, in this step, I did more detail with a thin brush and painted the soft and hard shadows that gave more sharpness and contrast to the scenery. And at last, did a few corrections to finish the watercolor painting.

 

 

Speed-paint link: