"Birds of a Feather" - Sketches

Here is some of the process work for the "Birds of a Feather" series. It went through a number of changes throughout the months I worked on it, as you can see from the process for the "Firebird," the first one I did.

 

The idea from the start was to portray the folk lore creature, say the Inuit raven, interacting in some way with a figure dressed in the outfits of the folklore's culture. So with the initial firebird sketches, I also researched a little bit of the Slavic/Russian traditional dress. There were additional creatures I had originally planned on putting into the series, like the Inuit Raven and the Native American Thunder Bird. My concepts at that point didn't get positive feedback from the Antwerp teachers, so I changed my approach to be more of a book/encyclopedia sort of feel, as if they'd be pages from a dictionary on mythical creatures.

My ideas changed again when the teachers still weren't really feeling the encyclopedia concept, so I tried for a more storybook feel to it. Still wasn't really met with agreement. 

From there I came to my more final idea, straight black and white pieces in pen and ink washes(These still didn't meet with approval from the instructors, but I forged on anyways as the deadline was coming closer now). I still tried to stick to the "Fact or Fiction" theme by having certain words that were also personality traits written in on the pieces, as if they were almost a new sort of tarot card.

 I wound up taking the words out from the final results, but it was interesting to read and reread the folk stories and decide what lesson or knowledge there was to be learned from it.