In my last post, I mentioned that I have been making an effort to include more humans in my portfolio. This piece today is part of that same effort. The same day that I sketched a little kid watching a butterfly, I drew another kid hanging from…something. I wasn’t sure what he would be hanging from, but I liked the sketch I’d done with his little arms behind his head, his eyes looking down with a concerned expression, and his shirt sort of riding up. I wanted to know what he was looking at though, and what he was hanging onto. I went through a bunch of different ideas and scenarios (hanging from a wire in a circus, hanging from a high tree branch where he slipped while trying to get his kite back, etc…), but I eventually decided that since he was a kid, I didn’t want him in too dangerous of a situation, as that would probably cause the viewer to worry about him instead of enjoy the picture. I finally settled on the idea that he was getting away from a snake, tried to climb a nearby sapling, and discovered that it wasn’t able to support his weight. Here’s my initial sketch:
I didn’t really change much when I refined this one. I mainly tried to smooth out some of the details of the tree:
In thinking about the colors for this one, I dressed the kid in colors I tend to like to wear. The blue shirt happened to work out pretty well in retrospect. With all the green surrounding it, it helped to draw the viewer’s eyes to the boy who is the center of interest. The circular composition then gets the eye moving around the image. I wish I could say I had planned that, but the truth is that I only discovered these things after it was finished. I’ll have to keep that stuff in mind though for future illustrations and try to be more intentional about incorporating it.
Thanks for stopping by!