This past Illustration Friday I was too busy getting ready being the Best Man for my brother's wedding. (And yes, it was a wonderful weekend at the Physick House in Philadelphia.)
The word for this week is: FAREWELL. This word was a big challenge, especially since I want to do only humorous/fun images -- and this word was directly associated with sadness.
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THOUGHT PROCESS: My first thought was to create an image of a small character waving goodbye to a large character walking away. The farewell ending music from my childhood TV show "The Incredible Hulk" started to come to mind. That classic image of Bruce ("David") Banner walking away from yet another location. But doing an image of Hulk sulking away didn't seem funny -- and I couldn't think of an appropriate small character to be waving goodbye.
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| Quick pen doodle of my "mental" concept for FAREWELL |
So I thought what type of goodbye would seem funny?
A goodbye that was sarcastic.
That's when I thought of a parent saying goodbye to their child leaving home, (but deep down the parent is extremely happy to see the child go) -- aka leaving the nest.
That's when I first envisioned the image of a Momma bird "encouraging" her young to leave the nest. Originally, I did a quick sketch with two chicks being booted, but somehow the idea of several being "kicked" at once seemed more cruel then just the one.
A goodbye that was sarcastic.
That's when I thought of a parent saying goodbye to their child leaving home, (but deep down the parent is extremely happy to see the child go) -- aka leaving the nest.
That's when I first envisioned the image of a Momma bird "encouraging" her young to leave the nest. Originally, I did a quick sketch with two chicks being booted, but somehow the idea of several being "kicked" at once seemed more cruel then just the one.
FOCUS: I also thought the idea of giving zombie-like, dead pan eyes would make the bird characters funnier. The eyes make it seem like the Momma bird is just going through the motions - staring at you, the viewer, as if to say "I'm doing this because this is what nature intended me to do." There is also a humorous disconnect of the Momma not looking at the chick as it plummets. (But don't worry, the chick flies away safely . . . honest!)
DRAWING PROCESS: For this image - I used digital color pencils on very rough textured papered surface. When finishing, I used a very thin eraser across the image's outlines to make them break up and seem more scratchy.
(UPDATE)
I had played around with this style of the image, with more solid ink lines and a moss paint brush canopy of "leaves" on top of the image. I didn't care for the solid lines for this image - and the 3D Moss brush clashes with the 2D line work. The "leaves" are also too strong and take away from the focus of the image.
I thought I'd post it here just to show the difference.
(UPDATE)
I had played around with this style of the image, with more solid ink lines and a moss paint brush canopy of "leaves" on top of the image. I didn't care for the solid lines for this image - and the 3D Moss brush clashes with the 2D line work. The "leaves" are also too strong and take away from the focus of the image.
I thought I'd post it here just to show the difference.
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| Earlier pen ink style lines with 3D moss brush for leaves |
