Surprisingly Lethal
I have to say, the “Lovely and Lethal” exhibit kind of pushed me to my limits in some ways… and beyond. I had to draw some things I hadn’t drawn before in ways I hadn’t even thought about. A couple of the most difficult pieces ton conceptualize were these two.
“Feathers”
Feathers were a big part of the fashion industry and, in this case, the lethal aspect was more inclined toward the animals than people.
Have you ever had to make a macaw scary? Let me tell you, it took some thought. One of the notes I got from one of my drafts was to make it “more deranged.” If you’ve ever seen a macaw, you can understand how this might have short circuited my brain for a minute. Granted, it was a very good note, but I’ve only ever drawn tropical birds as “cute” or “pretty.” I considered making this one look a little more rough for the wear, maybe giving it some patches of missing feathers, but I decided to go into more of a “revenge” sort of angle. I don’t know who’s skull that was, but I imagine they may have swiped one two many of this macaw’s friends so the bird went full Liam Neeson.
“Vanity”
This one was inspired by Charles Allan Gilbert’s “All is Vanity” using a mirror and table from the exhibit. I’ve never attempted to make furniture spooky, but hopefully it sort of works. I think this would have been better in black and white, but I needed to keep with the colorful aesthetic of the others.
Forget the difficulties of making a macaw scary. Have you ever made a TABLE scary? I haven’t. In fact, I hate drawing objects most of the time. I’m still getting the hang of it. All in all, for what it is I do think it gets the point across. I probably could have been a little more wild with the colors to make it pop more, but I just could not really get super inspired by this one. It’s certainly adequate and gets the message across of being objects that together make a different image (do you see it?), but I still and pretty “blah” on it. It’s not my best… but it isn’t the worst either.
What do you think? I actually heard one of my visitors said the macaw art was their favorite… which I find very shocking.
