Illustration Friday Week 9 - Shelter

Initial Ideas

Umbrella, tent, under a tree, hood, home, hat, parasol, newspaper, doorway, archway, tailgate, bus stop, gazebo, cycle shelter, tunnel, canopy. Shelter for smaller things - leaves, flower, bench, rock, bush, under a car, woodpile, coal bunker.
Protection, parents, guardians, siblings, friends, sheltered upbringing, wrapped in cotton wool.

Roughs

I did some initial roughs but want particularly taken by any of the concepts, I then thought of the idea of an animal shelter and with animals that need rehoming. I decided on cats because this is clearly a current trend and I do enjoy drawing them.

Reference Imagery

I wanted to use some sort of paint for this image because I haven't used wet media and colour together in a while, I chose gouache as its colours are stronger than watercolour and I find it easier to work with than acrylics or oils. I found some reference images online and had a quick practice of painting some cats.

Drawing / Painting

I think the challenge for me is to get the proportions right as I prefer to go straight in with paint without sketching beforehand. This means my paintings can take a turn for the worst if the proportions go wrong half way through. I think for the final images I will draw a vague shape to follow in pencil to avoid this happening. I am happy with how the paintings are going, using gouache is coming a lot more naturally to me than I had expected.

More Roughs

I did some more roughs because I hadn't fully planned out the composition of this image yet. I am going to use a 2x3 grid so space for six cats, although I might leave one of the cages empty to show that one has been re-homed. I am going to give a suggestion of more cages by having the edges of other cages in view, this will give the impression that there a lot more cats there and this image is just focussed on a few. I also did a simple sketch for each cage showing what would be happening inside.

Painting Components

Using reference imagery, I painted some more cats in a variety of colours. I wanted the cats to look either confused or sad because I think these emotions are relevant to the situation - I can't say I am a fan of cats and I don't think their facial expressions ever really look happy so this was quite simple to do by working from reference. I wanted to use a couple of my original paintings but these were only of the heads so I drew some blanket piles so I could combine these on photoshop to make it look like the cat's body is curled up in a blanket. I also painted a couple of backgrounds for the case showing that they are quite small, cramped and bare.

Photoshop

I combined all of my images on photoshop and I labelled all of my layers to make sure I knew which each component was. This was SO useful and I should definitely take the time to do it more, it causes a lot less confusion and I think I worked more efficiently because of it. I played around with the levels of my layers a bit but I wanted to keep the colours quite subtle, if not a bit dull and bland to try and get across the atmosphere of an animal shelter. I blurred the edges of the image into a rounded rectangle to give the impression that there is more beyond the frame.

Submission and Evaluation

To improve this image, I think I could have paid more attention to what was happening in the outer cages, maybe showing the feet of some cats or some toys or blankets in some of them would make them look less empty. I am actually really proud of this image and I think I might start working with gouache more often because I enjoyed it and it gave the overall effect I desired. I think the image is well balanced with colour and composition but the empty cage adds a but more interest and starts to tell a story, especially as the black cat has realised that something has changed.