Kinga's and my personal illustration project is a little overdue, but I'm done. This time it's my topic of choice. I decided to break the pattern of monosyllabic words thus far and chose 'destroy':
(acrylic and pen, A3)
This was a weird one. It started off with a photo of a swan that I'd taken a while back. I thought to myself "it looks too clean...".
I started off in a painterly style, and the water leant itself quite well to it. Part way through I was watching a TV documentary about Impressionist painters, notably Monet and Renoir. I was inspired by it and made the water even more brushy-looking than my usual style normally dictates. The swan didn't really lend itself too much to a painterly style however. I wanted the appearance of fine details so I drew them in with white Posca pen. This gave the swan's body the suggestion of feathers, rather than looking like a milky, washed-out blob. It also made the swan pop out from the watery background, which was a nice after-effect.
After the first pass it looked like this:
I could have just finished here and called this something like Swan #1, but seeing as the topic was destroy and this had no kind of destructive quality about it, I had to go on.
The next step was to sketch a rough piece to overlay. I had a few choices for what word to use. I could have just went with destroy but that was way too obvious (and too long). I could have gone the corny route and used something like style or urban, but those feel like buzzwords used by the media when they portray or describe graffiti. Instead I went the more 'intelligent' route (sure...) and went with mute.
Why 'mute'? Because the swan I painted is commonly known as a mute swan. Makes sense now, doesn't it? I used the typical "dub" style of chrome in black. It's simplicity is in contrast to the complexity and roughness of the painting. Opposites are good.
Silver pen. Shiny.
Nothing like the juxtaposition of a majestic swan with a line of graffiti on it's side.
That is awesome!
ReplyDeleteLove the detail on the feathers, but its the idea of a graffiti swan that gets me. Fantastic idea.