2013 Illustrations (Part 1 of 2)

2013 really was a very productive year for me art-wise so gear yourself up for a fairly long post because I have plenty of illustrations to show!

Actually I am going to split this post into two sections. Two parts will be easier for you to digest and for me to write about.
This first one then will show all the animal study illustrations I made in 2013 - part two (coming soon) will detail the fantasy pieces I created.

Animals

I experimented with drawing on top of ink stained backgrounds with black Micron ink and Sakura white gel pen which made for some quite striking images. I wanted to try and hone down a realistic illustration look without losing the artistic factor. I think I achieved that fairly well and certainly had some fun with my chosen subjects. 

Yes a lot of my chosen subjects were cats but I tried to pick expressive poses that I hadn't tested before and to work into the colour of the background.

Considering I am not a fan of very bright colours I was pleased at how well the ink staining married with the final illustrations. Pink is not my go-to choice of background colour!

I found the above tiger cub pose a very difficult one and ended up making an art card, this illustration and a painting with this same expression just because it was a challenge!

Brown ink stains worked well for me, also I love the patterns in big cat fur. The above ocelot is a smaller 'big' cat but I enjoyed incorporating those shiny eyes and that fur pattern in one image.

I love foxes as much as cats. I'm not sure how successful the above illustration was but I sent the original off to the Papergirl 2013 event. This event hands out art for free. I hope someone out there has this fox illustration with the message I put on the back! 

Next to cats and foxes I like birds of prey. Eagles, falcons and hawks have always fascinated me.
I was lucky enough to watch many birds of prey in training and my favourite one was always the tiny Merlin. I am not well practiced in drawing birds, the feathers are so much trickier than fur to me.

This one was all about pushing perspective. Foreshortening is a nightmare to most of us artists. Ergo the idea for this was to test a deep perspective.

The above two illustrations were created as challenges set by Coloured Pencil Magazine.
The left Roller bird had so many colours and I liked the idea of limiting my medium to only coloured pencils. The right white wolf came from a photograph that had two wolves in it. I went for a more simplistic impression of fur and the background was a wash of water-mixable pencils. The magazine folks seem to only like photo-realism so it didn't score highly on their site. I personally like the character captured in that wolf even if it wasn't photo-realistic or well received. 

Another bird - oh yes I like the magpie and jay scavengers too. So here's all that trouble drawing feathers I spoke about. Also perspective on feathers. Add on top of that any subject that is purely white or black or in this case both >.<
It all worked out well enough for me to finish and be able to post this but this was a challenge no doubt!

Next up then will be the fantasy illustrations I made in 2013 - are you tired yet? I am certain I must have been by the end of this year!