Four Winds

BWAHAHA!

Sorry about the watermark, but I do NOT want this stolen.

This is that BIG PROJECT I've been talking about!

Geeze... This took forEVER...

Tiger sketch: not very long, maybe 20 minutes from this reference
Tiger painting: The entire length of I, Robot, so around an hour and a half
Phoenix sketch: 45 minutes, from this reference
Phoenix painting: 1.5 hours
Dragon sketch: 45 minutes, no reference
Dragon painting: 1.5 hours (at least, probably more)
Tortoise sketch: 30 minutes from a random Google reference
Tortoise painting: 1.5 hours
Fish sketch: 45 minutes from random Google search reference of one fish, then just flipped it over
Fish painting (and circle): 1.5 hours (at least)
Kanji for North, South, East, and West: 10 minutes (includes Google searching for them)

Total: 13.25 hours (at least)

Now for the story behind each!

Koi fish: They represent Yin and Yang, the balance in nature, light and dark, day and night, etc.
White Tiger: The Chinese guardian of the West.
Vermilion Bird: (or the Red Sparrow) The Chinese guardian of the South.
Azure Dragon: The Chinese guardian of the East.
Black Tortoise: The Chinese guardian of the North.

The basis of the project was to make "dot art," or to copy the art of the Aborigines from Australia. They made paint out of plants and used lots of dots to make a picture. I sort of cheated by making the outlines and just filling them in, but I still love how this turned out.

I was absent for a whole week during the time we were working on these, so I didn't get a chance to work on it much until after school let out because I was so busy catching up in class. I had enough of it done that I could still get an A on it, but I still wanted to finish it. I plan to take it back to my art teacher next year and show her the finished product.

Entire project inspired by Seiryuu, Byakko, and Genbu by ~Vyrilien