I was talking to a co-worker and doodling...it all started with an upside down egg shape...within about three minutes that shape had 'turned itself' into an armadillo. What is the lesson? Again, always be ready to draw...second, shapes are your friend! In the beginning, most artists with natural talent tend to resist the 'break it down into shapes' or 'gesture' method. This usually results in work that suffers as 'deformed' while they try to do contour drawings and then add other stylizations for a more naturalistic appearance...there is no 'refining' stage.(By nature contour drawings always seem to be a bit distorted due to the techniques involved). Third...always feel free in the planning stages to let the drawing dictate itself! You can have a general idea that you work towards but be careful (and not afraid) to let the drawing have a life. Process and planning is important, but it can kill a piece if there isn't any 'breathing room'.
I eventually landed on the idea of...what if an armadillo was having a picnic to bring in ants to eat the food...so he could eat the ants!!! It was used in a series of drawings for my children's school.
While the original sketch sits in a pile of papers in a box, here is a brief sketch recreation showing the mere shapes I started with.
Having recently completed the Yuck pic...I thought I would return to the computer. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized I didn't want that 'sterile perfection' that can sometimes occur on the computer. I had to use multiple scraps of tracing paper to get the feet to look 'right' before compiling all the pieces and doing a final template (this will be shown in detail on a current project at a later date). The template was then burnished to piece of illustration board for coloring with Prismacolor. I used photoshop to figure out a nice background color and eventually used watercolor to there to complete the image.
1 comment:
I love the detail in this...the texture of his "hide." great stuff.
cute face.
Post a Comment