I made these Exotic Animal Illustrations for Shift+delete to put on T-Shirts. I created illustrations of animals in a similar style before but these new pieces have to be my favourite ones right now.
Compared to the other batch these include more layers, textures and elements and feature a wilder set of colours too. More surreal if you will.
I really enjoyed playing around with them to be honest. First I started with a hand-drawn contour using a 0.2 mm isograph pen. This gave the art work a solid and somewhat rational base so to say. Then came the real fun: dressing it all up with weird and unreasonable stuff like splash motives, web-like vector shapes I created for a previous project before, all sorts of textured layers, black&white photos and finally white surfaces to bring it back to balance.
And when they were done and I looked at them, I was so pleased. I felt a sense of completion that they couldn’t be more perfect. I can’t think of anything to add to them that would make them look better. And if I took something away, they would definitely miss it. And I don’t often say (or think) this but I was so proud of myself. Especially when I compared them to previous illustrations I made. I could see how much I evolved in such short time and how little effort it took. I was able to create a kind of image that I used to look at and think ‘ Wow, I wish I could do something like that!’.
When I tried to grasp complex art works with my mind solely, it left me confused not knowing where I would even begin if I had to replicate them. And now I understand that these things come to me if I stop thinking and just start sketching and ‘throwing’ bits and bobs where they feel right. And before I notice all the steps and elements that don’t necessary make sense on their own end up constructing this organism where every little detail is vital in order to maintain perfect balance.
art from scratch 