Dog-humans and peachy honey buns
Recently, I noticed a pattern of anthropomorphism in my work, more specifically, the recurring theme of ‘dog-humans’ appearing in my sketchbook accompanied by sweet dog-friends. Always together, going on little adventures. I have been thinking about these characters a lot, trying to dig a bit deeper into the worlds they live in, asking questions like; Where are they going? What will they have for lunch? What kind of music do they like? Am I painting people I know in the shape of dog-humans? What would I look like as a dog-human? How do people live without dogs? So many important questions. I felt it could be nice to include a blog entry to chat about how some of them came about.
When the nights are long and the warmth of the world dwindles into pure nothingness,
I will carry the moon to you.
When the stars starts to fade and the sweet birds we once so deeply loved leaves us behind,
I will carry the moon to you.
When our hearts grow old and our stories start to fade,
I will carry te moon to you.
Above you can see the base colour designed in procreate of the original ‘carry the moon’ illustration (below is the final). The concept of the illustration was originally inspired by the short poem I wrote. Writing is something that I often struggle with, but it continues to play a big part of my creative process. Sometimes a simple word scribble act as a starting point for a drawing or it helps to pinpoint an abstract emotion that might later translate into a key message behind the artwork. This isn’t always the exact process (below you will see a more playful approach on how an illustration was born).
For this poem, I was reflecting on the people in my life who bring so much light and love into the world. I think we can often look at ‘light-giving' people and assume they simply just have a lot more love and energy to offer in comparison to others. I’m learning through the privileged journey of having such people in my life that its not always the case. Most times ‘bringing the moon’ to someone is an intentional act of love, despite the weight it might take to find that light. This character reminded me we all have the ability to bring the moon to the ones we love and that there is magic in those who do this for us.
The initial sketchbook idea looked a little bit different to the final painting. This sometimes happen when a character spontaneously appears on page during the rough sketch phase. As you can see, the first sketch didn’t really have much structure to it and it was mostly a play on body movement (something I am actively trying to incorporate into my work). This felt like the ‘searching phase’ of the drawing, it doesn’t always work out this well or neat! I also tried to incorporate some of the line work in the final illustration.
Floating, flying, dancing.
A weightless peach sky morning, sweet scented air and impromptu dance moves beneath the giant woodland shroom.
Okay friends, thank you for reading along. I will be sharing more dog-humans over the next few weeks! Let me know what you think of them over on the instagram world. And if you have read this far, thank you. Now be good dog-humans okay.