Monkeying Around

Day 29 of the November Asian art daily painting challenge. One day left. Because the time is winding down and I've really wanted to challenge myself this month by first (1) starting to do art, (2) learning and practicing skills to make beautiful paintings (beautiful in my eyes is ok), and (3) drawing and painting different things than what I've attempted in the past. Well, I haven't draw a lot  in the past but what I'm saying is trying to do things that I haven't thought of drawing before (like the monkeys tonight) or drawing things that I don't particularly like (example, drawing still life (*&^#$@!) which I find boring but I did a still life piece two days ago, "Tea Time"). A friend just asked me to draw her little dog with a plum blossom and a tea set, all symbols that are a part of her life. I really don't like dogs and probably have never thought of drawing one, but you know, it's for a friend and she has an intriguing composition in mind ... so why not?! It'll be my first dog probably, so another first! This month there's been a lot of firsts! I have thoroughly enjoyed this painting challenge!

For these monkeys I drew two monkeys by looking at different reference pictures. The third and smallest monkey I drew without any reference. I just had to get the shape ok and since it's further in the background I didn't have to draw in a lot of detail. The shading could be better in several spots of the composition and I'm seeing a couple other areas that could be fixed up before posting this, but it's very very late and I need to crash. 

Monkeying Around
Marie's watercolor and Chinese ink with touches of Micron .005 around the face, hands and feet. Shikishi.