Doe Eyes was the result of an assignment in my Survey of Illustration class where were went over the history of illustration and its many sub-categories. For a few of these categories, we were given the task of creating illustrations that embodied the core elements of the respective genre.
Doe Eyes was based on the Anthropomorphic movement that began in the Victorian era and has been a part of illustration ever since. Anthropomorphism is defines as "the attribution of human characteristics or behavior to a god, animal, or object." My class had the additional parameter of only using animals.
I played with a handful of ideas that ranged from animals to objects. I wanted to stay away from the typical anthropomorphic images like a rabbit wearing a top hat, monocle, and suit while sporting a mustache and a word bubble saying "Good day, sir!". What I ended up with is arguably along that vein in that it has that portrait look to it, but my goal was to make the real changes in the details. I also wanted to verge on the grotesque and make an image that is pretty at a glance but somewhat discomforting upon closer inspection.
At this stage (above), I have chopped up and rearranged some smoke line work from another drawing and added it into the areas I had yet to draw in order to get a feel for how it could possibly flow.
And the final results are two pieces, one where the smoke is the frame and one where it is not.
The texture I used in the background is homemade. I used a resist technique with some acrylic paints and scanned it.
