In Depth Process: Rabbit Heart

Hello all! Thank you for visiting my website. If you're new here, welcome! This blog is where I go more in depth about the materials, techniques, and processes I use when creating my artwork. This IDP will focus on my painting titled Rabbit Heart based on the Florence + the Machine song. This was actually an assignment from one of my illustration courses where we designed album/CD covers. Florence + the Machine is one of my favorite bands, so it just felt right to make one based on them!

MATERIALS:

• Paper
• Graphite Pencil
• India ink pens
• Adobe Photoshop

I started this piece with a pencil drawing of the rabbit skeleton. The research portion was pretty difficult because skeleton anatomy is always more intricate and precise than flesh. I then went over my pencil line work with ink pens and scanned it into my computer. In Photoshop, I separated the line work from the background, and began painting the rabbit's body on a different layer. I had to mess around with the opacity of both layers to get them to a point where they didn't seem to clash with each other.

On different layers I painted the apple, the color of the rabbit's bones, and the vines. I found a bunch of images of foliage that I could use for reuse with modification, and cut out portions that I liked best and compiled them together to make a large bush for the rabbit to lay in. On top of that I added a vignette and even more vines that I kept flat rather than rendered. Lastly, I played around with the line work for the skeleton because what I had initially picked wasn't standing out nicely. I made my own "gold" line work by mixing two shades of bronze into the one line layer. 

That's about it! It was definitely a much more exhausting process than those few paragraphs make it sound. Nevertheless, I love the final product! If you have any questions about tips and materials please feel free to comment or email me! 

​-Sarah