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PUSSYFOOTIN'... |
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At the time of this sketch, there
were only two Ps, and I thought they were fairly boy-oriented. I
wanted to do a P that might be more appealing to girls.
From
the time this idea first came to me, I knew how I would draw the
ballet dancer, so I skipped the thumbnail step and went straight
to a full size sketch. As you can see, the first
illustration
involved a skunk (one of the candidates for the caption was "Polecat
Polka").
Click
on any illustration for an enlargement.
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| I've
wanted to do a letter with a cat in it, so the skunk became a cat.
As for the flower, I thought about extending the P-ness by having
a petunia, pansy or peony in the cat's mouth, but I rejected that
idea. I kept the original idea of a rose because anything else probably
wouldn't have been noticed and/or recognizable. |
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This is the line drawing that was transferred to the final surface
for painting. The final surface is a piece of single ply, acid-free
bristol board with a vellum finish. All letters are small--each original
image is about four and a quarter inches high. |
| Watercolor
dyes (Dr. Martins) to cover up the white of the paper. |
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The
main step: Colored pencil |
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The
letter is basically finished in the colored pencil step, but
I almost always use a little bit of
acrylics
to help out the highlights and the
darks. Sometimes I'll use a thin glaze to strengthen the color someplace,
but not always.
I really wanted to name this one 'Pas de Chat' because (1) it's
an actual ballet maneuver, (2) pas is pronounced 'paw' and (3) 'chat'
is 'cat' in French. What a perfect fit! In the end I didn't use
it because it seemed too subtle, plus it is a pretty obscure phrase...I
just happened to stumble across it myself.
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