I had made some quick sketches of animals for one of my online class exercises a few months ago:
Later, I was thinking about how to use the animals in a painting and thought of this arrangement.
I had just visited the local zoo, so I thought it would be cool to make it into a colorful 'poster' styled painting with the word "Zoologico" (Spanish for 'Zoo') at the bottom.
Finally I got around to making it. I wanted to 'layer' the animals somehow, and keep them kind of 'blocky' without too many details/features. But first I wanted to make a background. At first I had the idea of the background showing through to the animals (but it didn't work out that way). A blank canvas is sometimes the most difficult place to start, so I started filling it up with pretty colors:
And more colors, with some texture with stencils:
Then I knew I would have to add some animals at some point, so I sketched out some blob shapes with paint:
Then I looked at my animal quick sketches and drew similar shapes for outlines and cut them out (can you see the chicked and the seahorse and the dog/cow that didn't make the cut?):
Then placed them on the background and moved them around until I found something that seemed like a good arrangement:
Then I placed the shapes one at a time and outlined them with paint:
Then I started filling in the shapes with color, layering the animals from back to front:
More colors and layers:
Added white paint over the visible background parts to try and unify everything and make the animals stand out:
At that point I decided I didn't like the big space in the middle where the hippo-like animal and the tiger-like shape meet, so I decided to add some more animals to that middle part:
I definitely think it's much better with the extra animals. Now I need to paint the onto the canvass, then continue working on the colors/patterns of each animal and tie it all together, add some dark outlines, etc. I like it so far!
