In general, all of the images here will have been digitally edited in some way. Scanning illustrations tends to flatten the image somewhat, meaning it loses some of its definition, which digital editing can help fix, as well as adding other improvements.
Click on any images to enlarge them.
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| Tawny Frogmouth, Australian Mapgie and Rainbow Lorikeet Podargus strigodes, Cracticus tibicen and Trichoglossus haematodus |
The start of my more recent illustrations, the main purpose of this task was to create a sense of perspective within the artwork. While this is conveyed through a number of 'techniques', such as overlapping, scale, tone and detail, it was actually done to set the scene for a number of upcoming tasks. These next tasks would require us to attempt to create a sense of depth without perspective. Perspective was merely a starting point that allowed us to get our head around the initial concept.
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| Beetles (various) Order Coleoptera |
This task was just as mentioned above, to create depth in a relatively flat field. Perspective is not a factor here, but the techniques are still able to create that same sense. Done in pen and ink using a technique called 'crosshatching', the 'depth' of this work is definitely up to your own subjectivity. As a footnote, I've noticed one mistake in this scanned image, which I will fix as soon as I'm able. Until then, see if you can spot it!
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| Collared Sparrowhawk (Juvenile) Accipiter cirrhocephalus |
These three tasks are examples of practising composing an illustration, with aim of focusing on a different aspect each time. The first, on the left, focused on creating perspective. For this, the task was to draw three skulls from the specimen lab to create a foreground, midground and background. The middle one focused on light, and involved creating a work, using four objects from the specimen lab, with a shared light source. The last one, focused on the layout on the page, where we were required to assemble random aspects of different images of plants into an interesting, and good-looking, composition. As may be apparent from the picture, I found this task the hardest of the three.
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| Morph Chimaera bunyipi |
Often tasks won't represent a particular purpose. This task was a bit of a design challenge. We needed to merge three different animal types into one, combined 'animal'. As you may expect, many other students designed creatures with the arms of one animal, legs of another, and wings of a third. Personally, I didn't want to go for this, and wanted to keep the classic, tetrapod design of any natural vertebrate. Funnily enough, in order to best fit in my third animal type, I had to compromise this by giving it an extra head... Ultimately I was still happy with it, as, if nothing else, it looked semi-decent, and I hadn't just slapped the top, mid and bottom section of three different animals together, which was another thing I'd wanted to avoid. For this morph, I combined the head and shoulders of a brush-tailed possum, a head of a bearded dragon, the legs of a pheasant coucal, and, as a fourth, the tail of a little shearwater.
Additionally, you might be interested to know that I actually ended up drawing the morph's skeletal structure, in order to complete the final drawing. Basically, it helped the morph look more uniform and structured, and vastly improved how it looked. Chimaera bunyipi is obviously a phoney scientific name I made up for my creation, both chimaeras and bunyips being mythological mash-ups of several different creatures.
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| Children's book illustration |
This task was to illustrate one of four passages we were given from a particular children's book. This was done by stippling dots with a colour wash over the top. The passage I chose obviously described a lot more than appears in my illustration. I decided to keep it as simple as possible, and only illustrated a line or two from the text. While this isn't the best work I've done, I was happy with what I chose to illustrate, and definitely feel as though it was appropriate to the brief we were tasked with.
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| Mosquito logo |
First off, I was very happy with how this illustration turned out. We were given a task to design a logo with an animal whose name starts with the first letter of our first or last name, incorporating both the animal and the letter into the single logo. The impressive part about this illustration, for me, was that I effectively designed the whole thing from scratch. What I mean by that is, although I did two preliminary studies based off a couple of images I found online, both only showed the mosquito from the side, so, when it came to drawing it from this new angle, it was all my own work.
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| Monarch Butterfly Danaus plexippus |
This task required us to illustrate and animal's profile on black scraperboard. I have mixed feelings about this piece. For some reason, I envisioned that doing a butterfly in this manner would look quite effective, despite the fact that it didn't strictly answer the brief we were given, as it's simply a dorsal view of a butterfly, not an animal's profile. While I believe it did turn out well, creating flat areas of tone on scraperboard wasn't particularly impressive, or fun. Overall, I am still happy with it, and others have said they've found it quite appealing, too.
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| Common Grey Mongoose vs. Indian Cobra Herpestes edwardsii vs. Naja naja |
A number of tasks require us to depict something specific about one or more animals. In this task, we were required to illustrate an animal in some form of interaction with one or more other animals. For this, I completed a pencil and pastel illustration of the famous fights between a mongoose and cobra. The stance they're in is far from natural for such a fight, but it is, in my opinion, far more interactive, and is actually a common position for these two animals to be taxidermied in.
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| Digital illustration |
This was the very first illustration I ever did on a digital illustration tablet. Being talked through the process, step by step, we were able to complete some pretty decent looking trees considering how foreign the digital tablets were to us. My guess is that the tutor's choice of drawing a tree was key to that success. Where, if we were drawing a face, an oversized nose or wonky eyes would be obvious, but no-one's going to notice an oversized branch or wonky trunk...
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| Little Shearwater Puffinus assimilis |
Another task depicting nature, here we had to show an animal in its natural habitat. Using a little shearwater specimen from the lab, I decided to try and use the uni's digital tablets again. This was the second illustration I'd done on a digital tablet, and, not being talked through it this time, I did encounter a lot of problems. Overall, I was very happy with the outcome, and being able to work digitally was still a lot of fun.
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| Lioness anatomy Panthera leo |
In natural history illustration, it's surprising how much an understanding of what's underneath the skin can affect the outcome of your work. As such, it's pretty common to look at the skull of any animal you're working on to help inform your drawing. Elaborating on this, we were tasked with completing a skeletal, muscular and superficial illustration of a particular animal. It was interesting seeing how all the layers came together. Click through the images to see for yourself!
These four works made up my major project for a Visual Communication subject. The only requirements were to create four artworks, in four different mediums, relating to a particular theme of our choosing. I obviously chosen animals, and elected to 'design' four of my own bird/mammal hybrids. For interest's sake, I made sure the pairs I selected for each creature occupied a similar niché in nature, being runners/sprinters, carnivores, scavengers, and large herbivores, as well as roughly similar body shapes, in order to create something that was potentially believable, while avoiding the classic eagle/horses or eagle/lions seen in fiction and mythology.
Stay tuned for later updates!
Other forms of illustration:
2 comments:
Very good work Michael. You can now add Beecroft to the list of exotic locations that have visited your site.
You've done a great job with the website, Michael. Your drawings are terrific. We'll be interested to see how the digital ones develop as you keep practising.
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