Illustration Friday: Future

It's Illustration Friday -- which means it's time to play creative word association! Each week a word is given on the website, IllustrationFriday.com. Artists and illustrators then submit an image that represents that word. My added challenge is to try to do something humorous. I find this is not only fun - but just a great exercise for creating and experimenting with painting programs.

This week's word: FUTURE

I didn't have much time this week since my workload is very heavy making pet clothing designs/sayings/patterns for PetSmart -- but I still wanted to submit an image for the site. So I did a digital sketch in pencil. No coloring, inking, etc.

Cartoon pencil sketch based on Rodin's The Thinker

THOUGHT PROCESS:

For me, the first thing that comes to mind about the future is a robot. When I think of robots, I often wonder if I'll see the day a robot or computer will have it's own thoughts (or develop an original thought/concept based on existing patterns of design.) We are getting closer and closer to actual artificial intelligence, and while the true concept of that may never be achieved, we know we already use A.I.-like programming to solve and explore possibilities never previously thought of before. 

So a robot thinking made me think of Rodin's timeless classic statue, The Thinker. I found a reference image and began drawing a robot sitting is that familiar pose.

Image of Rodin's Thinker used for reference

FOCUS & TWIST:
So what would a robot be thinking of? I tried to convey that the computer the robot was sitting on wasn't working and the robot was trying to figure out "why?" By making his eyes look down and away from the computer's plug, we get the sense he may never come up with a solution -- that the solution is so apparently close.

The typed message is a spin on the old catch phrase, but I thought it'd be fun to change the phrase "under our noses" to "under our olfactory sensory nodules."

Illustration Friday
If you would like to join in on the fun, head over to Illustration Friday. It's totally free, no need to login or sign up for anything. You can view all the submissions from this week (and past archives of previous words.) Have a sketch to show? Send your own artwork up for others to see.