tiger

This time I did not announce I was working on a new Son’s Popkes artwork, because let’s be honest, the last time the illustration did not turn out as I hoped. Fortunately, my latest illustration featuring nothing else but Koji, has become the artwork I fancied and I am proud to present it here.

It is simply titled ‘Lazy Koji’.

Together with my autumn Popkes artwork, I posted a ‘painting process’ slideshow. I think it is fun to show you how an illustration comes about.

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I must admit to myself, I like crocheting better, find it less frustrating. That is rather curious, as I have been drawing practically since I was born. Crocheting I have only been doing for five years now. The thing is though, when working on a painting, I can come to a certain point where I absolutely do not know how to proceed. It drives me nuts, I totally think I can never make the painting as beautiful as I fantasize, so what is the point in continuing?

For this illustration, I can show you exactly when that was, as it happens, after the second pic. There still was a lot of blue in the image and I had no idea what to do next. I just did not see it and felt like stopping. I took a break, thought about what to do and decided to just fill in the blank spaces with the colours I though would be right. And that helped. The painting now had the right mood, and for me, when the mood and colours are set, I can fill in the details and so on. Just look for yourself how much difference it made.

Maybe blue as a background colour was a bit poorly chosen for this painting and I should have started with a yellow background, but in the end, I did get it right!

Normally, I make the sketch of a doll before I start crochet designing it. The sketch functions as a reference of sizes and shapes and basically is my guide. This time however, I only made the sketch just now, after I already finished the actual crochet animal. Now why is that?

Before I started working on this tiger, I was not sure about how I was going to make him. I had many options of how to design him. I could go for horizontal stripes or realistic ones. And should I tilt the head so the stripes would follow the lines of the crochet rounds better? There were so many options, I had to try it all. Then of course at some point, I found the right style for the tiger and went along making him.

Stopping then just to make a sketch was not going to happen. As soon as there is a sweet little face looking at me, I can not wait any longer to finish the animal.

Everyone here reading my blog has to be a little patience still. The pattern is not finished yet and pictures have to be taken too. In the meantime, enjoy the sketch of Koji, my glorious tiger. The pattern will be released somewhere next week.