I don’t really post that many early progress stuff on Instagram, because it doesn’t ever seem like it goes over so well? But I know I like to see that kind of thing, so I thought it was OK to put in a blog post!
Here’s a new idea I’m working on for my solo in October. I thought you’d like to see its evolution from mere idea to more fleshed out drawing. Below is just a hair of an idea (get it? hair? hare?) Sorry, I couldn’t resist. Often I’ll leave something like this alone and come back to it the next day, which I did. Remember the acorn on the bottom right, because I’ll refer to it later. (Yeah that’s an acorn).
Early inception of an idea in pencil.
Then the next day, I made it a more specific bun…
Early in the process, but with a cuter and more specific bunny character in pencil.
Then I expanded the background. Takes a while and a lot of erasing and fixing along the way… I suck at ovals and circles and don’t have any large template things (whatever those things are called), so I do my best, which isn’t perfect, and then when I’m far enough along I’ll double check it’s accuracy in photoshop after I scan the drawing. Often I’m not completely off and it’s just a minor tweak here and there. It’s lighter at the top because of my lamps at the top of my desk.
Expanded idea in pencil. Getting the idea across now.
Still rough. These sketches aren’t really meant to be finished art, but I’m starting to get the idea of what I want to convey. If you remember the rough acorn on the first shot above, I was reminding myself that I wanted to play with planes of reality in the piece. So I will have some “real” elements in the foreground above the patterned area and the “window” to where the bunny is living. So the flower and strawberry will be in the foreground. The daisy in the oval frame will peek out into the foreground as well.
Just about done. Or done enough to move on to the painting part of the process.
You may wonder why the strawberry is floating. I could say it’s because it’s just laying on top of the patterned background. (Which, by the way, I’m going to treat like it’s an embroidered texture when I paint it.) But it’s because I intend for it to meet a part of the frame that I will be using. And the frame has a TON of bleed area at the top and bottom. Fingers crossed it will work out OK. It will take quite a bit of testing to make sure it aligns right. (By testing, I mean I print out the sketch and place it in the frame to make sure it lines up properly).
Anyway, I’m not really supposed to post finished stuff for the galleries too far ahead…but this won’t really look much like this when I do the painting, so I think it’s just fine. I like keeping secrets. And I like that my brain knows what this is probably going to look like (basically), but you will have to wait to see! 😆 I hope to start this one soon. I say that with everything I’m working on, though. Because it’s true. I wish I had 36 hours in a day! I have so many ideas and pursuits right now that I’m basically swirling as soon as I wake up in the morning and have to force myself to chill in the evening so I can get a good night’s sleep! Otherwise I’ll be working out details in my dreams.
If you have any questions, feel free to comment here! I hope you liked this post. :)