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.
