Illustration Friday: EXPLORE. The Best Use for a Broken TV Set, Ever.

     It's Illustration Friday! Yeah!  I am growing fond of these weekly challenges.  I get 100% freedom on a random topic.  I get to EXPLORE something new and fun every week outside of everything else.  This really appeals to an artistic hermit.  Traveling afar in one's imagination; very fun.

     This week's topic is "Explore."  I decided to explore an old piece that I had been thinking about revisiting and re-working.  Illustration Friday gave me an excuse to do so. :0)    

     The concept was originally used to meet an editorial need for an illustration to promote "unplugging" to the next generation.  I created a scenario where a young boy takes a junkyard television into his bedroom and converts it to his own little reading space.  A place where he can travel into the depths of his imagination and he escapes into a good book.  I decided that this young boy would be interested in Adventure and Travel books.  He is imaginative, obviously, but also resourceful and has ingenuity.  I also thought it would be cute and fun to draw giraffes.  I had originally played with the idea of other animals and children (I have included shots of the old sketches.)

    I had first rendered the image back in college day.  Though I had taken the image all the way to finish using acrylic, I still preferred it's "prelim" or preliminary state.  I liked the monochromatic sepia tones of the paint.  I felt that the prelim was actually superior to the finished illustration.  Even so, after all these years, I have toyed with the idea of revisiting the illustration and improving it.  Finishing it in another medium, possibly watercolor or ink and digital paint, as I so often do these days.  When I read the email disclosing the "explore" topic for Illustration Friday, I knew that I needed to pull this old friend out of the closet and re-work him.

     One issue I did run into was that I did not have the original sketch anymore.  For whatever reason over the years, it disappeared from closet or sketchbook.  I, fortunately, had a "cleaned up" version of it on tracing paper that survived.  I used this as a base to rework that final you see submitted here for Illustration Friday.  Besides my obvious abandonment of using a monochromatic color scheme, you will see that I added very few new colors to the mix... just enough to make it work, though overall there is still a very strong foundation of color based in brown or sepia, like the original illustration.  I also took this opportunity to develop the map that is taped to the back "wall" of the television and also the photographs.  These were originally planned for the first illustration but, again, for whatever reason were cut. 

    The collage medium has never occurred to me previously before last Friday when I was reading my emails and decided that I would not just re-post the old version of this image, but "EXPLORE" it again and recreate it new and improved.   I hope you enjoy it and perhaps are inspired to curl up with a good book on one of these Very Cold Holidays. :0)

Until then, as always...
Keep sketching, keep thinking, keep laughing and most important of all, keep making art. 
Cheers,
LEWIS

thumbnail ideas for original editorial piece.

possible adventurer. 

 

My first crack at the concept and composition. 

giraffes. 

Tigers, Oh My. 

Tigers were originally the animal

our little adventurer would imagine.