This week in Art – Safari

Every week I am taking the time to discuss one of the art pieces that I, or me and my son, have created. I go through the thought process, the influences, the technique, etc. I am hoping that this post will help you better understand the origin of my art and admire all of its intricacies.

This week I am presenting the first “official” collaboration piece created with the help of my son. It is entitled “Africa”, it is 11 x 14 inches in dimensions and it has been sold with 9 other pieces to an organization that will give those pieces as a thank you gift to volunteers.

When I first started this piece, I started with just a couple of lines. Those lines looked like a face of a cat figure. (as shown in Fig.1). So I continued with the detailing of the jaw and the ears. I believe that this was the first time as well that I dd some spacing between the lines at the start. I wanted to try something different, reinvent my style.

Soon I saw the lion, so I went on and drew it’s mane. Each little point is distant from one another to give it this fiery feel. (fig. 2) When I finished illustrating the mane, I was amazed at how different the drawing looked form what I was used to create. Although interesting, I found that the face was a bit too far off to the left. Visually, it was unbalanced, so I had to come up with an interesting way to draw the body. I didn’t have much room, so I kind of took a little break from it to figure out what to do.(fig. 3)

While I was surfing on the web, I read an article about a mother who illustrates human faces and has her 4 year old daughter complete the drawing. Which gave very interesting pieces of art. (You can find her site here.) That gave me an idea. Seeing that my son was always reproducing my pieces after I completed them (see fig. 4), I decided that maybe we could try this collaboration art thing.

So I sat my boy down with the drawing and I told him; “Can you help dad finish the drawing?” His eyes light up as soon as I finished the sentence. He took my pen and he drew the body of that lion on a horizon line(fig. 5). Then He passed the pen right back to me. I was amazed at how fast and happy that made him. Looking at the drawing I was quite happy but still too much weight on the left side.(see fig. 6)

I did not want to ad any trees because I was coming out of 5 to 6 pieces with trees or bushes. I wanted to explore a different background element. So I went and started drawing little rectangles intertwined with each other. I thought to myself; “There are no bad-decisions in art, just beautiful mistakes” And those rectangles turned out great. When came the time to color the piece, I wanted to stay within the natural colors; browns, blues, greens and yellows.(fig. 7)

Once done, I asked my son to sign his name so that people would know he participated in this. He was more than happy to do so. This triggered a big collaborative boost between my son and I. Up to this day, we have created over 40 pieces together and he has sold over 20 pieces.

I truly hope you enjoyed reading the creative process of this piece as much as my son did drawing it. Why don’t you take a pen, a brush or a pencil and start creating your own art? Be creative and don’t be afraid to make bad-decisions towards the pieces. Sometimes you come up with something just plain awesome.

In the meantime, be creative.