Africa
"Africa" is a drawing I did for a particular client who asked me to draw a silhouette of an hippopotamus full of animals, plants and things that represent Africa. He wanted something funny with weird characters.
So after about 50 hours of work here is the result, I hope you like it! 50*65 cm on 200 gr paper with rotrings and a watercolor pencil.
The idea wasn't mine but I helped the client to visualized it better and I had some ideas like the hunters into the mouth of the hippo. I wanted to do something in black and white and pop up some element with a touch of a warm color (orange).
I started with a list of elements about Africa that I can draw into the hippopotamus. Then I draw a really rough pencil sketch to visualize the project and show it to the client. Then I did another sketch a little bit bigger, and I started the final drawing with pencil. I like to work with rough sketches to have the main idea and forms, but I also always improvise when I'm doing the final artwork.
Once I had the pencil drawing done, I inked it, add the textures and detail, and then put the color with a watercolor pencil. I passed about 50 hours in the whole process.
People respond pretty well to this project. This was my first client work so I learned to work with a client while adding your own ideas into the project and also to be flexible. Thanks to this illustration (and a few more in the same style that I did before), I have been commissioned to do a color book for children that has just been published by Hachette livre.