In the jungle, the mighty jungle…

Here are the photos of the finished mural! A big thanks to Becca for letting me do this. She, Matt and Riley seem very pleased with it, as am I. Actually, it’s turned out a bit different than I had planned. I was initially going to keep the colour quite flat like a gouache style kids book, but once I accidentally started putting a little bit of lighting and shade into it, I sort of ran with it and I’m really pleased with the depth it created in the picture. My only concern was that it might be a bit derivative, (a certain monkey might be a bit Jungle Book, and a certain tree might look a bit like Up) but hey! He’s only two, I’m hoping he won’t notice!

Jungle Boogie

For the last few weeks I’ve been designing and painting a jungle mural for my friends 2 year old little boy. It’s a bit of a departure from my usual subject matter, but it’s been nice to have a break from portraits and people and I’ve found out that animals are really fun to draw!

As soon as I had agreed to do it and we had settled on a jungle theme I quickly realised that I had no idea where to begin! So I decided to embrace the kid in me and watch the Jungle Book (any excuse!).

I really liked how the balance between the detailed foreground, the simple flat colours for the characters and the misty, diffuse backgrounds where trees and plants just become simple shapes. I’d also just bought ‘The Art Of Up’ by Tim Hauser and really loved Lou Romano’s gouache paintings, his use of bold shapes and colour.

I also liked the work of Daniel Lopez Munoz, Rickey Nierva and Dominique Louis. In fact, the entire book is great, and I was drawn to the idea of ‘simplexity’ they used to design the film. 

“That is the art of simplifying an image down to it’s essence. But the complexity that you layer on top of it - in texture, design or detail - is masked by how simple the form is.”

I also looked a lot at Mary Blair and Joey Chou ( http://choochooclan.com/) for inspiration. I used the way these artists use simple, dynamic shapes to design my Tiger and monkey characters. Also I tried to emulate the way the Up artists had used texture and colour to create depth.

Here’s my first sketch of the jungle.

Here’s the design spread over two walls for the room.

And here’s my tiger design, painted in gouache.

"I think that one’s art is a growth inside one. I do not think one can explain growth. It is silent and subtle. One does not keep digging up a plant to see how it grows."

— Emily Carr

Happy Halloween!

'With My Mind She Runs'

Development

Inspired by a photo I saw of someone in costume at Burning Man and another artists work called ‘Light Inside” by Tamberella. I suppose it’s about inspiration; staying inspired and running with it! Oh, and i like drawing feathers!

‘In Bloom’

Following a digital illustration course and learning to paint in Photoshop, it became this…

(Thanks to Lexy and Nick at Turnip Starfish and everyone else on the course!)

Which then turned into this ...

Taking The Next Step

After many months of drawing from reference, learning anatomy, attempting gesture drawing, going out with a sketchbook and looking at lots of artwork, I finally decided to begin putting what I had learned into practice and stop copying and start really drawing!

So, after playing around with a pencil and some inks, I came up with this.

Here's another couple of portraits.

Patti Smith - Gothic Crow

Final cleaned up pencil drawing.

Drawing in progress

 My first piece is of one of my heroes, Patti Smith. She was once described as "a gothic crow" by Salvador Dali and this was the initial inspiration for this piece. My idea was to have her hair turn into feathers and while researching suitable photos of her I found a great one by Annie Leibovitz. The photo showed her strong character and reminded me of the 19th Century photos of Native American chiefs, which fitted in well with the feathers idea.

The Last Twelve Months ...

It's been one year since I started to make a serious effort to work on my drawing skills and experiment with different styles. Over the next week I will be posting some of my favourites for you.