Experiment

A few months back I did a painting for an SCWBI event that I ended up not being able to attend.  They had an illustration challenge to do an image from Aesop's fable, 'The Tortoise and the hare'.  I had done an illustration early on in college on the same story and I thought it would be fun to do another and see how they compare.  I hadn't looked at the painting I did in school at least five years.  My concept was to use the same basic idea and to incorporate some of the details I could remember without actually looking at the painting.
So today I dug out the old painting and scanned it in.   The class I did this in was illustration 2 and was probably the first children book type of illustration that I had done.  At the time I was really proud of this one but it is pretty rough.  Looks like I did it in watercolor, colored pencil, and ink.  About this time I thought I would always work in watercolor, but I was really struggling with the medium.  My problem with watercolor is that when I paint I'm not very direct and I like to feel out the color.  I like to work up to it and to be able to make mistakes.  So eventually I went to acrylic because acrylic allows you to rework until you get what you want without it turning into mud. (click image to enlarge)

From that original painting I remembered the main ideas.  I knew it was landscape crop, the tortoise had a rocket on his back, the rabbit was burnt in the background, and I could remember a few other minor details.  With those things in mind I was off to make the new illustration.  This time I switched to a portrait layout and changed quite a few things.  I painted it in acrylic on watercolor paper with a digital underpainting and a small amount of other mixed media.  The values are a little weak but it was a super rushed painting.  It's interesting to see them side by side. The way I work has totally changed.  Normally I wouldn't want to do the same idea twice but it was fun to see the outcome. (click image to enlarge)