Just on Friday (5 Jul), I read a simple but amazing book called Momo by Michael Ende.

It’s about an orphaned girl named Momo, who is blessed with an extraordinary gift for listening standing up against the time thieves who are also taking away the joy and happiness of the town.

Inspired by some of the beautiful descriptions, I decided to draw some of them myself.

[Though I had noted that the book has all rights reserved, meaning that whatever that is related to must have permission from the author/artist/translator. They can have my interpretation of the book if they want.]

So first, I gather information on Momo’s appearance and listed them down so that I can refer to them at any time.

Then on the right, I decided to search up a normal 10 years old body proportion as a reference

In the middle, I drew two variations of Momo, each with a slight change.

At the bottom, I tried out different angles for her head and torso, giving myself a better understanding and consolidate my interpretation of the character

At the next page, I drew a mini overall image of the scene I’ve imagined while enlarging the body posture to get a better sense of how it would look like and whether it would work.

In the end, I chose to draw the scene in Page 165, because…

• It is a scene right in the middle of the book, which means it captures the essence of the storyline which is related to time
• Cassiopeia, undoubtedly an important character in the book is in the scene
• Momo is shown in a full-body pose, allowing all the details to be properly shown, thus showing my understanding of the character

After choosing the scene, I drew it onto an A4 while adding the other details like the numerous clocks described in the book.

I used a blue colour pencil instead of a regular lead pencil because not only does lead pencil smudges, it also dirties the paint while in contact with water. I had to refer to multiple references at times to grasp the different clocks I plan to include.

After getting a rough layout of the drawing, I used my drawing pens to outline the objects. I used different pen widths to differentiate the distance between the object, to set the objects apart from each other as well as highlight important features of the drawing. For the thinnest pen, I used it for light shading to create depth within the drawing.

I then erased the colour pencils and set up the workspace to get started with watercolour.

I started with the background first with a light yellow/orange colour to fill up the white space before moving onto the back of the grandfather clock on the left. I then did the rest of the clocks. After adding the wooden grains on some of the clocks, I decided to add some blue to the painting to indicate glass storage. I finally moved onto the main characters of the drawing. As I felt that Momo was not popping up enough so I outline her with purple watercolour (as it is the complementary colour of yellow/orange)

Overall, I am very satisfied with the drawing, though if possible, I would like to redo the inking of the circular clocks as they are a little wonky.

My favourite part of the drawing is definitely Momo and Cassiopeia as I felt that they really managed to stand out within the drawing (though this is probably because I left them the last and managed to improve/brush up my painting skills)