Art of the Arts: Nostalgic Drinks

Emily Huang

The medium I included in this piece is COLORED PENCILS! (I didn’t realize that I forgot the “-ed” from the last post, but it’s the same thing anyways..) This post is also a bit different than my previous post because it’s not a comparison between different mediums, but they’re actually layered on each other (you can see the process pictured below). With the combination of each medium, it brings the whole drawing together, and overall makes it more appealing to the eye.

Here’s the thing –– I love yakults. If you’ve never heard of it before, you’ve got to try it –– you really are missing out if you haven’t tried it. To sum it up, it’s basically a yogurt drink. No, it doesn’t have the consistency of yogurt, but when you drink it, it sorta has a yogurt aftertaste, a sweet but slightly tangy taste. It’s pretty hard to describe, so here’s the online description: “Yakult is a delicious probiotic fermented milk drink that contains Yakult’s exclusive probiotic Lactobacillus casei strain Shirota (LcS). Daily consumption of Yakult helps improve digestion and helps build immunity.” That’s actually something I didn’t know about until I searched it just now. Though it doesn’t sound very good in this description, believe me, it’s amazing. I can literally down packets of these in one sitting (there’s 5 mini bottles in a packet).

In progress photo of piece taken @ NorCal Night Market

This drink has been one of my favorite childhood drinks, as my grandpa would always bring me one when he picked me up from preschool. As you may or may not have known from my previous post, I recently visited China, after about ten years. There, I got a lot of drinks I had enjoyed throughout my childhood, which inspired me to draw these asian brand drinks, which I still drink now. The ones I’ve drawn here are just a couple of my favorites.

I first did a rough sketch of where exactly I wanted each drink to be positioned, and for that I only used a single 0.5mm mechanical pencil. Using my pencil again, I started to add a bit more detail in it. I then began to outline the whole piece with a 1.0mm black pen and a firm tip brush pen. When I had finished with the outlining, I started to color the piece using Prismacolor colored pencils. This is actually my first time using these kind of colored pencils, so I might’ve added too many layers, making it not as smooth. I also had to get over my thought of wanting to keep it new and unused in the package because it just looked so nice. Then I used a white pen to add a few highlights to the drinks. I know some of the drinks are a little disproportional, but at least that gives it some personality.

(HINT: This medium is, again, two words, so there’s another freebie. Unscramble the words as well.)

Drinks Drawn:

“Yakult” Yogurt Drink

“Vita” Lemon Tea

“Vita” Soy Milk

“Wang Lao Ji” Herbal Tea

“Ramune” Carbonated Soft Drink

“Calpico” Non-carbonated Soft Drink

“Ito En” Green Tea

“Coconut Palm Brand” Coconut milk