Exhibition 2017

For the third year in a row, some of my pictures were on display, for just over a week, as part of an art group exhibition at Nature In Art. The way last year's 'Ruffed Lemurs' picture came out, informed my two new pictures for this year: taking a look at some old zoo photos for reference from one of my photo albums and selected particular animals, then used fine line black pen on textured paper, scanned it in and added a hint of colour with Photoshop.

'Macaque Monkeys'

I used two photos - one with the monkey looking up, and the other with the mum and child together - thinking they might just work as one image, despite the camera angling being different. Some inspiration was taken from the simple backgrounds, but the rock and other small bits were made up to make the monkey looking up work better with the others. (Out of interest, these zoo photos are from a France holiday back in 1999.) I used textured paper which had some coloured leaves stuck in the paper, which I thought could work with this kind of background. The general texture of the paper unfortunately gets lost with scanning, but that's what I get for not daring the colour traditionally! After going over the rough pencil lines with black fine line pen, then scanning, I worked some colour in with Photoshop. I tried colouring some more but felt it didn't really add anything, so went back to this stage.

'Sitting Bear'

 Another animal choice I don't tend to draw so much of, and a photo from the same zoo trip as the monkeys. A fun 'sitting' position this bear was captured in, reminded me of a bear performing tricks, and the textured paper I found with the differently-coloured flecks reminded me a tad of circus-y colours. (Wasn't it recently that using animals in circus performances was finally banned for good?) Anyway, this bear was sat like this against some rocks, and not much else could be seen of drawing interest in the shot, and so I came to decide to keep it simplified - hope it could work enough with the bear and rocks only. I do seem to really like drawing rocks; there's definitely a pattern there. Same process as above.

 

'Eagle Owl' 

The final picture on display was a previously uploaded image I created whilst at the first exhibition (2015) when I was an 'artist in residence'. It can be seen at this link, along with what I exhibited then:

Owl & 2015 Exhibition

Last year's 'Ruffed Lemur' display piece:

Ruffed Lemur

I didn't have time to be an artist in residence this year, but when I popped in to see where my pictures were the artist at the time there said some people had commented on the bear. It's nice to hear a piece got some people talking, noticing; otherwise who knows what the viewers are thinking at these exhibits! Great to have a chance to display some pictures again.

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On another note, this is apparently my 101st post. I thought this was going to be my 100th post, but looks like 'Buddy Holly Cat' got that honour. Hooray for 101 (Dalmatians) posts and quite a few years now on this blog! Very much appreciated those who do keep stopping by to take a look at my pictures of this continued 'creative endeavour'.

Buddy Holly Cat

'Buddy Holly Cat and His Crickets - the best Buddy Holly tribute act around!'

I was inspired to draw this 'promo shot' after going to see the 'The Buddy Holly Story' at the theatre - a musical and a back-in-time '50s concert. I knew pretty soon I wanted to draw a cat version of Buddy, and that the Crickets would in fact be mice. Started without any references for the general sketch posing and checked afterwards for details of what kind of suit, style of glasses, instrument details, etc. Hopefully this picture conveys some sense of energy and as a kind of tribute piece itself. Fun pic to do.