Tuesday 22 February 2011

Style of eyes and final tortoise design

I have decided that I want to make my drawings look realistic, but with cartoon-like eyes. Here I have to experimenting with different styles of cartoon eyes.


I like this style, it's quite manga like.




Here is my final design for the tortoise scenario.. I have given them the cartoon like eyes. All I need to do now is scan it in to the computer and start working on it in photoshop!









Sunday 20 February 2011

Using coloured pen and ink and other mediums

Today I experimented with some new inks I bought in London. I wanted to create a realistic looking tortoise using different mark techniques. I have used; coloured inks, black indian ink, water soluble pen, permanent pen, 2B pencil, water colour pencils and white gouache paint.

I like how it's turned out, but I don't know if it would work as a humorous drawing. I need to produce some more, maybe two tortoises mating to see if it would work.


Saturday 19 February 2011

Sexual Nature Exhibition

On Wednesday I went to London to visit the recently opened Sexual Nature Exhibition at the Natural History Museum. Because you had to pay to get in, it wasn't as busy as other exhibitions I've been to at the museum, so it was easy to properly look around at things.


When I walked in, it was a bit of a weird experience. The room was dark, there was porn like music playing in the background and just videos of animals mating with each other. I felt a bit perverted being in there, but then again I suppose my entire project is a bit perverted.
Having already researched into animal mating behaviour, I didn't actually learn a lot of new things, it was more a confirmation that my research was all correct. In fact I think a lot of the images and videos were taken from the David Attenborough series I had already watched.
They were also showing videos from Isabella Rossellini's Green Porno series, which are of her dressed up as different animals and demonstrating how they mate with one another. Having already watched most of these before, I got a bit bored. But other members of the public seemed to be having a right giggle at these videos, which is fair enough I guess.


What I enjoyed most about this exhibition were the little facts dotted around the room.

They also had taxidermied animals in the mating position, which I found quite interesting. It just made me think of the process that went into stuffing these animals in this position, must have been quite funny.




I took a photo of this as I had trouble finding the correct information about these lizards. And I wasn't sure if the lesbian like tendencies were right, but apparantly they are! Could have done quite a funny scenario about this one if I had known sooner:









At the end of the exhibition they had a section just about human relationships, which was quite entertaining. The even had a wall where people could stick up post its of really bad chat up lines.


Here is a display of the books they had on sale at the end, they even had a karma sutra pop up book! It looks like there is a space for my book idea to go though, as none seem to really joke about the act of animal sex.
So to sum up, I found my visit to this exhibition quite enjoyable. But the fact that I was looking around it on my own made me feel a bit perverted, but in a way it also made me feel quite normal. When I tell people about my project people often ask 'why are you doing it about that?!' and this exhibition has just helped me to think 'why not?'
I'd recommend it to friends if they were thinking of going, it is very informative and quite entertaining :)






Friday 18 February 2011

Tortoise style

Like with the salamander, I have been experimenting with different styles for the tortoise character. I think I want to make quite realistic so haven't tried to add a cartoony effect them.

Here is an idea incorportating different widths of outline, incorporated with small dots to decorate it:


This is in the style of Stefan G. Bucher:


This was just an experiment of how the different textures on the tortoises could be represented in terms of pen and ink:



Tuesday 15 February 2011

Salamander style

I have been looking at different styles of drawing using pen and ink. Some of the simple mark making techniques are quite similar to the works of Alice Melvin but I think I want to make mine a bit more realistic and less cartoony.
I still can't decide on the right style though, I'm finding it quite hard to find a medium between keeping it aesthetically pleasing, but also humorous.


Here I have added simple shading with coloured pencils:



I like this dot technique and may use it in my final design:














Tuesday 8 February 2011

Caped salamander.

Just drew a new picture for my Salamander as Twilight vampires.
But I added a cape. The pose I've done reminds me of Disney's Fantasia with the caped crocodiles!


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0pbQdtkbCcQ