Arrhythmia

Title taken from my favorite song of the moment:
R/R Coseboom - Arrhythmia (go listen, kthx.)

I feel I need to explain the colors and the way I depicted the surroundings since it differs greatly from the previous two animal illustrations. If you care to know, read on. If you don't, don't let the browser hit you on the way out.

Originally, the sky was going to be blue-green, but I wanted these illustrations to carry some consistency, so I opted for rich orange and red colors again. I'd like to interject that I wanted the drawing to be as open to interpretation as possible with the exception to the polar bear thing which obviously depicts a differentiation in time because it's clearly night time in the city.

The colors for the sky seem more "violent" by comparison I suppose. Indirectly, the texture dictated that there should be some kind of storm approaching. Looking at it now, it reminds me of a storm whose clouds have arrived as a warning to...eh... gtfo. Which is why there is a tree to shelter the giraffe a bit. Why the tree? Lightning will strike the nearest tallest object. So... better the tree than the giraffe. :]

Why the giraffe? I don't really know. I just pick an animal that I think would appeal to a child and run with it. Each piece is centered around the animal chosen and where you would generally find it (the cow amongst fresh grass, a polar bear near snow/ice caps, the giraffe out in the middle of a safari).

All of those elements were pretty clean-cut in the previous two drawings, so I wanted to break that by creating more abstraction between the sky, grass, and tree. Depth is something I want to explore with a "children's illustration", too. In most, the illustration is very... flat, for lack of a better word, with simple bold colors which the cow stayed very true to. The polar bear I was experimenting a bit with perspective and depth of time (i.e.: how long will he drift there and how far away are we really?)

Is that giraffe amazingly small? or is that tree freakishly huge? Our adult minds would obviously tell us that the tree must be amazingly large because... giraffes are already freakishly huge.

But what about to a child?

So yeah, there are loads of other thoughts that created this piece. Actually, come to think of it, I don't think I've made any of these literally for children. Maybe for the childish nature adults like to look back on. ;]