Once I had this idea, I made a mood board of the creatures of that book. Then I did research on the creatures and I picked out the ones that I like and see what identity features the creature has; for example, Bo – it’s a horse with tiger legs and paws. Then I drew observation drawing of the identity some from photo that I took and some photo from the internet. I did pages on the dogs, cats, fish scales, patterns of tiger’s and leopards, horse, different type of horns. For the observational drawing I tried out lots of different media : color pencil, oil pastel, oil painting and digital drawing.
After that I researched different artists to try out techniques or finding ideas. I chose 3 artist, Sijia Hong, Awanqi and Shanze. First I had researched on Sijia Hong and I did a pastiche of a bird drawing (which I didn’t find the name of the art piece) she did. I’d practice the technique of using lots of different layers, the shape of birds and the tiny details she had in her drawing. Then I researched Awanqi and did a pastiche of one of her drawings. I practiced creating a thick oil painting style but in a digital drawing way. Then I research about Shanze because he is doing something that I wanted my final piece to be like, I brought one of his books of his version of “The Classic of Mountains and Seas”, to see the layout.
I also did a research on students’ ideas to see how those creatures are different in different people’s minds. So, I chose 5 creatures and printed out description of the creatures both in English and Mandarin and gave them to the students. The students used their imagination to draw what do they think the creatures look like based on the description.
All together I tried out the techniques from Sijia Hong and Awanqi and I had inspiration from the book Shanze has made – a book of collection of creatures in the book of “The Classic of Mountains and Seas” and the research I did on students’ drawing. I had the idea to do a collection of creatures, but in the form of postcards and I used digital drawing. Then I made a plan of the postcard idea and did a rough piece to test out the time. Originally I was going to do 6 creatures, but it took too long, so I cut it down to 4 creatures. I also did a plan B, just in case, which is creating a creature and description by myself – but I wanted to keep it linked to the original text. For the postcard decided to do digitally 4 creatures on my iPad, then using photoshop to do the layout and the description and name.
Finally, for the final piece, I didn’t quite really finish it during the mock exam time because I’m not perfectly ready and “skilled” at using photoshop so when I put my drawing into photoshop it took me too much time to do the layout. If I did the layout quicker then maybe I could send it back to my iPad to add more detail. Overall, I am happy with my final piece because I am produced my first set of postcards and I’m proud that I leaned photoshop and utilize my digital painting skill. Also this is the first time I’ve draw something out just base on description.
