Animal robots

There was no art this week. The week was eaten by business records, tax and work 🙁 so I have nothing new. However, I neglected to update this blog for most of the first half of this year, so I thought I would share one of my works-in-progress. It is currently sitting on my drying shelves waiting for me to do something about it.

This one is a little different. Early this year my eldest daughter started to draw…a lot. Every day. Even in the car on the way to school. And she was drawing robot animals.

I have no idea what sparked her inspiration to draw robot animals, but there were robot cats, robot rats, dogs, a whole array of different types of animals that were robots. She developed quite a style and somewhere along the line she dragged me in. I really liked her imaginings, so with her permission, I created my own interpretation.

First I did some concept sketches and came up with this.

Which I then coloured in 😀

Then came the painting prep.

I wanted a textured background for interest and depth, so I played with a stencil I had made some time ago and splotched some stars in the paint.

I also did some splattering and I’m quite happy with how the background turned out.

After the paint dried, I traced down my design and started painting.

This is quite a step away from my usually realistic tendencies, but I found it quite interesting.

I didn’t want the body parts to stay flat, so I started playing around with texture. I decided to use a textured that was quite non-mechanical, to offset the obvious metallic feel. I think there might be some vague steampunk influences here too.

And this is where it has been stuck since April. All those swirly reds on the legs took ages and I got distracted. I will likely finish it at some point. My daughter was so excited I was creating a painting with her ideas in it (except for the colours, she was adamant that the robot should be brown – I don’t really do brown – we had a stylistic clash :D). I’d be a bad Mum not to finish it.

Since then my daughter has been drawing everyday. She has sketchbooks full of all sorts of imaginative pieces and is now going through a phase of drawing all the characters from one of her favourite computer games. I don’t mind – as long as she is drawing. This is valuable practise. I learnt how to draw by copying cartoon drawings out of a joke book when I was her age (she’s nine, I started drawing when I was seven, but she’s been drawing for a long time now…there is quite a bit of example and encouragement in this house for that kind of activity :D).

Anyway, this is my contribution for Paint Party Friday this week. Don’t forget to drop over there and eyeball the wonderful work that has been created this week.

This weekend I will be doing some art with my stamps. The following weekend is my workshop at the Unley Town Hall – Create your own stamps. If you are interested in attending and playing with some cutters and rubber stamps, please contact the Unley Libraries on 8372 5100 to book your place.

Art always!

Best wishes,
Liz