Lost in Fish Bowls was another 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.
Lost in Fish Bowls came out of our "Self Assign" project where we could choose whichever genre in illustration we wanted and had to come up with a piece that utilized the characteristics of said genre. I chose Surrealism/Neo-Surrealism since I am drawn to its quirky and straight up weird aspects.
I spent a lot of time looking at the work of the incredible talented illustrator Yuko Shimizu, a personal favorite of mine. Her use of crazy perspective paired with even crazier imagery is always fascinating and inspiring to me.
Lost in Fish Bowls did not start off with any real meaning behind it. It was just a doodle that I thought looked cool so I played with it a bit. I’m always trying to come up with meanings and symbolism in my drawings but often find that I like it when I cannot actually make any work. The hard part is explaining it to teachers. "What does it mean?", they ask. "It's just what I want it to be..."
"A juxtaposition of that which floats in air and in water," perhaps.
Anyway, the process work for Fish Bowls is as follows:
And finally the finished piece:
I added some textures to the background. I try to use my own textures (ie surfaces I scan, photograph, and or make myself) whenever possible. If I do not have what I need on hand, I look to free stock textures.
