Nature Illustration
Overview:
Title: My Happy Place Size: 25.5 cm x 38 cm Medium: Colored Pencil Date of Completion: August 2023 Exhibition Text: My Happy Place is a colored pencil illustration inspired by Georgia O'Keeffe. I was inspired by how O'Keeffe illustrates things that are from places she has lived. My piece is inspired by things I saw at South Shore Park. The flower seen in the illustration symbolizes strength and healing. |
Inspiration: Georgia O'Keeffe
My inspiration for my piece is Georgia O’Keeffe. She is an artist from Sun Prairie, WI and has traveled all throughout the country. She lived through the modernism movement and that is very much seen throughout her works. She often creates art that depicts flowers and other aspects of nature that are familiar to the places that she has lived. This is what I found inspiring about her. In my illustration, I am illustrating aspects of nature that I have seen at a city park here in Milwaukee. I am combining a lot of the aspects that I saw into one illustration. I was inspired by the two paintings above. Both of these paintings have very simplistic forms with an immense amount of detail, along with the bright,vibrant colors. This is what I would later try to recreate with the flowers that I will be drawing. It is important for my flower to appear as realistic as the ones in O’Keeffe’s paintings.
Planning
I knew the main aspect of my illustration was going to be the flower that i choose to draw. I looked back at photos that I had taken at South Shore Park and found two different types of flowers. One is a purple coneflower, also known as Echinacea flower. The other one is an Arizona sun blanket flower. I did some research to see what each type of flower symbolizes. The Arizona sun blanket flower symbolizes joy and happiness, while the purple coneflower represents strength and healing. I decided to illustrate the purple coneflower because I resonate with the symbolism the most.
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Once I knew which flower I would end up illustrating, I did a large sketch of the flower with some of the other greens that would be around it. I swatched some colors to see with colors would be the best fit for the flower in order to make it look closer to the original photo. At this point I am not quite sure how many of these purple coneflowers I want to include in the final draft but I do want to include more than just one. I want to create a nice balance between the flower being the main focal point while also have a contrast with the other elements present.
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I then sketched out some of the other elements that i want to include. These also came from photos that I had taken at South Shore Park. I included the water and the rocks that line the water. I also included the aspect of the beach, which was my favorite part of the park. All of these elements will be placed strategically in the illustration so that they compliment each other instead of overpowering. I plan on using more dull colors for the greens and the water and some brighter colors for the rocks and the flowers to create that level of contrast.
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Process
The first step in the illustration was to draw out the first flower. I outlined the flower in the middle section of the illustration board. I then used four different shades of pink and blended them together on each petal of the flower. I used a darker shade of pink for the details of the flower. For the inner part of the flower I used small lines to mimmic the center of the real flower. Here I used a mixture of colored pencils and fine tip markers. I used red and brown in the outer edge and going on into the center. In the center I used a green colored pencil to create the little spikes and then used the green fine tip marker to get the mor fine, clear lines. I blended the colors together more towards the center and allowed the outer edges to stay how they were. Lastly I added some green lines for the leaves behind the flower. I used four shades of green along with the green fine tip marker.
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In the original image there are some brown leaves that are hanging near the pink flower. I added this to the bottom right section of the illustration board. I used a dark brown and a light brown colored pencil to color in the outline tht I had created. I blended out some of the edges so that they were not as sharp. I wanted the browns to blend with the greens that I would add later around this section.
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In the image to the right you can see that this is where i started to fill in the background around the first purple flower and the dead leaves. I used multiple shades of green and brown to create the nature in the background. Using sharp lines I created some leaves and then just shaded in the rest with the dark green colored pencil. I blended the edges of each leaf slightly to blend with all of the other ones. I then used a black colored pencil to go over the edges around the flower to create the shadow. It was important that the elements blended well together without getting lost in one another. I then used some lighter shades the closer I got to the edges and closer to the flower.
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This is the step where I decided to add a second flower to the illustration. I think it was important to add another flower so that the two flowers would be the main aspect of the board and the focal point. This flower was added to the bottom left section of the illustration board. I used the same colors as the first flower but I added a slight intentional shade difference. I believe this made it more realistic that having them as the exact same color. I colored around this flower with the solid dark green color with hints of light green around it. I left the streaks on purpose to help give the allusion of the grass and the leaves.
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One of the things that I had found fascinating at South Shore Park was the water and the rocks that bordered it. This was an aspect I just had to include in my illustration. To achieve the ombre look in the water I used a sky blue color pencil to lay a solid light color for the whole water. Next I used a shade called "true blue" to darken up the edges near the shore line. Lastly I added some accents of extra dark blue, "Copenhagen" and violet. To create the rocks I used different pressures of gray to create the outlines of the rocks. I shaded in each rock differently using the gray and the tan pencils.
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Lastly I added the sand part of the park. You can't have the water and not have the sand. To create the sand I used the tan colored pencil with a light pressure. I used some pink and some black to mimmic the seashells. This was also one of my favorite things about the park, looking for seashells. After everything was done I went through all of the aspects and darkened some things, outlined, and blended better. These were the final details.
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Experimentation
The only thing I did for the experimentation is the color swatches. This allowed me to determine which colors I would end up using for each component. There were some colors that I thought would match but when I swatched them it didn't match at all. This is where the importance of the swaches comes in.
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Critique
There are some similarities between the inspirational pieces from O'Keeffe and mine. For example, O'Keeffe makes pieces that have aspects of places that she has once lived. This is what I did for my illustration. The components in mine are all from South Shore Park, a park that is very familiar to me and my family. Another similarity is that I used some very vivid colors. The green in the leaves has a similar vibrancy to the flowers in O'Keeffe's paintings. For the differences, the main one is the medium of the pieces. O'Keeffe's works are done with oil on canvas, whereas mine is done in colored pencil and markers. The theme of finding things that are familiar to the hometown is something that I was heavily influenced by.
Reflection
Overall, the process of creating this illustration was kind of difficult for me. My favorite part was being able to see the pictures that I had taken come to life. I was able to make my illustration look fairly similar to the pictures I took. The hardest part was being able to focus long enough to get the project done. My attention span with this project was not very good. Working with the colored pencils was fairly easy for me and so was the blending. If I could do this project over again I would talk more time on the leaves part. The symbolism of the flower resonates with me as far as the strength and the healing.
ACT Questions
Clearly explain how you are able to identify the cause effect relationship between your inspiration and its effect on your artwork?
What is the overall approach the author has regarding the topic of your inspiration?
What kind of generalizations and conclusions have you discovered about people, ideas, culture, etc. while you researched your inspiration?
What is the central idea or theme around your inspirational research?.
What kind of inferences did you make while reading your research?
- My inspiration for my piece is Georgia O’Keeffe. She paints aspects of nature that are familiar to the places that she has lived. This is what I chose to do for this project because this place is very familiar to me.
What is the overall approach the author has regarding the topic of your inspiration?
- The overall approach is familiarity and being surrounded by places that make people happy.
What kind of generalizations and conclusions have you discovered about people, ideas, culture, etc. while you researched your inspiration?
- The conclusion that I made is actually about the symbolism of the flower that I chose to recreate in my drawing. It symbolizes strength and healing. This hit me instantly when I saw it and I knew this was the flower I had to recreate.
What is the central idea or theme around your inspirational research?.
- The central theme around my research is joy and happiness along with strength.
What kind of inferences did you make while reading your research?
- One of the inferences that I made is that a place that a person lives deep down resonates with them forever.
MLA Citations
“Mariposa Lilies and Indian Paintbrush, 1941: The Georgia O’Keeffe Museum.” Georgia O’Keeffe Museum: Collections Online, collections.okeeffemuseum.org/object/1016/.
“Untitled (Hibiscus), 1939: The Georgia O’Keeffe Museum.” Georgia O’Keeffe Museum: Collections Online, collections.okeeffemuseum.org/object/975/.
“Untitled (Hibiscus), 1939: The Georgia O’Keeffe Museum.” Georgia O’Keeffe Museum: Collections Online, collections.okeeffemuseum.org/object/975/.