Illustration Friday 26/07/13 - "Jungle"

Illustration Friday - "Jungle"

For anyone who doesn't know Illustration Friday is a website which provides weekly creative inspiration. A word is chosen every Friday and then you are asked to produce a piece of artwork connected to it. The connection could be very loose and you can use whatever media you like! I've always found it to be quite a fun way of coming up with new ideas if I'm stuck in my own artistic routines.

The word posted last Friday was "Jungle" and it has been something that I have worked on over this past week, I'm posting my results here today in preparation for a new word tomorrow (and also to prove to myself that I can deal with deadlines!).

Firstly, I started with some research into the definition of the word Jungle. 

jun·gle  

/ˈjəNGgəl/

Noun An area of land overgrown with dense forest and tangled vegetation, typically in the tropics. A wild tangled mass of vegetation or other things. (src)

My findings ranged from depictions of the Rainforest, 'urban' and 'concrete' jungles and even to songs i.e. 'Welcome to the Jungle'. After this I began some initial early morning (read 2 a.m.) sketching using watercolour pencil.

Flowers of the rainforest - sketchbook edition.

The flora of the Rainforest really grabbed my attention as they tend to be bright and attractive to the eye, the large flowers and entanglement of vines also reminded me of the entwining natural designs of William Morris' wallpapers and thus led me to my next few sketches, determining a pattern of my own. 

Scans of the pen drawings of flowers
ready for arrangement in Photoshop.

My flowers are quite simplified and drawn in Berol pen into a sketchbook and then scanned on to the computer for the design to be completed digitally. I have other sketches for different ideas from this week, but this was the one that I focussed in on.

What would come to be the final Layout
with first set of added colours.

This was the result of some initial experimentation. Not quite a twisting Morris pattern but an attractive set up. My first colour choices didn't seem exactly right, and I found it to be the most challenging aspect of the piece. One thing I did take from the trial and error was the idea of surrounding lines of darker colours rather than leaving them as black ink as I didn't want a cartoonish look for the design. The hummingbird actually comes from a drawing I created before as the illustration to a poem by D H Lawrence.

Second colour change.

Here I tried adding darker and lighter parts to give more contrast but the colour palette still didn't seem right. 

Shapely design.

The picture above was a bit of a happy accident whilst fixing the outlines. It has a tropical feel which suits the subject matter nicely and the graphic shapes would possibly make a great t-shirt design.

Looking much better.

Eventually, after a little more experimentation, this is the design which I felt fixed all the things that I was hoping to change before. I toned down the colour palette a lot so that it wasn't quite so garish. The greens are perfect for a jungle theme and the pink adds a nice tropical contrast. The white outline lifted the picture off the page and I am a fan of the offset look. The weakest parts for me are probably the pokers in the background which needed some assemblage in photoshop and could have done with a re-draw.

So there you have it, my Illustration Friday entry. Finished by midweek and with a few designs I can use for other things. Including the one below, I was very happy with how the palm fan worked out and it looks like I could still get my Morris design from this yet.

The beginnings of a pattern using scans of the large
Palm Fan that I drew for the centre of my design.

A few of my favourite entries from this week:

Please click the links below the pictures to check out more of each artists work. 

Note: I am not taking credit for any of these, just showing admiration.

Entry by Skim Milk

Entry by Katherine Wisdom

Entry by Revelle Taillon