Adult Coloring Book
My daughter - an accomplished artist herself - and I discussed how we never understood the interest of adult coloring books. Why would we want to simply add colors to illustrations others had drawn, when we could create the illustrations ourselves? Fortunately for us, it is a popular trend. The inspiration for these illustrations came through exploration of countless detailed illustration styles (many found in children’s books) and many thumbnails of ideas for fantasy landscapes, science fiction worlds, real and imaginary creatures. The images were first hand drawn in pencil, then in ink. These inked drawings were then scanned in to be tidied up and refined in Photoshop. As a tool for collage and layout of visual elements, Photoshop has no equal. As a child of the 60’s and 70’s accustomed to cutting images out of magazines by hand with a scissors to paste and collage, Photoshop is like a dream come true.
Cheshire Cat
The Cheshire Cat is a mixed media illustration of a mythological monster. Based on the character originally popularized by Lewis Carroll in his novel Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, this whimsical version of the creature demonstrates it’s mischievous ability to disappear gradually by portraying the stripes of it’s body as a series of concentric loops through which we see portions of the white gouache spattered stars of the night sky. Other cat images in various poses make up the background and appear to penetrate or be part of the main cat image. As monster’s go, it might not appear very scary at first, it is perhaps best known for it’s mischievous ability to leave behind only it’s impish grin, and for it’s habit of posing enigmatic questions which don’t have specific answers, which could be at least very annoying. Hand-lettering playfully describes the cat’s characteristics and an experimental tin-foil grin shows the exploration of media involved in this project.
Linoleum Block Print
These ink drawings were created to be featured as the subject of a linoleum block print project. Inspiration for these comes from Folk Art, and in the case of the bee illustration, specifically from a close-up photo of a bumblebee resting on a coneflower in my yard. As one deathly afraid of bees from childhood, I’ve come a long way. The fine detail of setae or fine hair “fuzz” on the bee’s body, the beauty of the intricate lines of it’s lacy wings combined with the spiny bracts protruding from the center “cone” florets of the flower seemed destined to be reproduced as block print art. Multiple thumbnails were sketched to target and refine a concept design, then after re-creating the drawing in ink, it was transferred to the block using acetone. The design was carved from the 8”by 6” block using a Speedball linoleum cutting tool, and from there the block was inked and the design printed in the print lab. The completed design was ultimately transferred digitally to a variety of mock-up applications.
