My Secret Elephant

I went up to the Museum of Anthropology at UBC to shoot some reference photos for one of the scenes in the book. The museum has been undergoing renovations, and while it’s now open, there are still a few areas that are closed. Unfortunately, one of those galleries contain some of the things I wanted to photograph. Here are a few photos from the shoot:

I’m at the draw, redraw and draw again stage of the final drawings. My desk is buried under a few inches of tracing paper.

I use layers of tracing paper to draw and reposition elements when working out the composition, but I also scan my drawings and shift them around in photoshop. Sometimes I’ll scribble things into the drawing directly on the computer because it’s often quicker to try stuff out that way.

rough ink and pencil sketch (chopped off a bit at top and bottom by the scanner)

colour test

It’s not supposed to be about the tools. But sometimes it really is all about the tools. Today, I picked up a pen I bought a few months ago but haven’t used much and everything clicked. It just works so well with the way I naturally draw. Instead of fighting to adjust my gestures to accommodate my pen, I forgot all about the instrument I was holding and just drew.

more work in progress drawings and a tiny slice of the studio – the rest of it is covered in paper.

medium and paint test a bit further along (detail)

I came across this chameleon by chance in a local pet food shop today. Since there’s a chameleon in one of the illustrations for this book project, I took photographs of this one for reference. His name is Oscar and he’s a 2 year old male veiled chameleon. The pet food store took him in when his young owner lost interest in him (how is that possible? this guy is awesome!). A few of his cricket meals have escaped over time and have taken up residence around the tiny shop where they sing from their hiding places among the bags of dog and cat food.