Moving along nicely with these new highlighter drawings, this time it’s of a Mandarin Duck. I felt like challenging myself with something tough to do.  A lot of people really liked my Parrot, so I wanted to see if I could one up it. This one certainly was a handful. While the cheeks were definately a tangled hard mess to deal with, I actually think the toughest part to make any sense out of is it’s back wings. When you look closely at these ducks you’ll notice that they have the weirdest types of feathres on their back… Unlike normal feathers, these ones look like butterfly wings. Google it and look for yourself. No clue how to draw ‘that’ with highlighters, but I did my best. It’d be different with paint of course, but hey, this is the difference and the reason why I’m using highlighters instead of paint. I’m finding the limitations of these mediums, and I’m trying to see if I can break them and actually achieve what I’m trying to do. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose. Last time it was figuring out how to do the colour Red. I thought I was stuck for a full day pondering it. I figured it out. This time I got stuck on those feathers… because they are transparent and reflect multiple colours all at once through eachother. That, and there is only so much space to represent that illusion.

Well, here it is (I’ve edited out the background to make the duck stand out more naturally as it does on the actual page in person).

Highlighter Art