Life of Pi

Life of Pi by Yann Martel published 2001. The story follows a young boys esacape on from a shipwreck on a lifeboat accompanied by a group of wild animals. I think the book explores ideas about how the human mind deals with trauma and the lengths man can go to when really pressed. I must admit I was also influenced by the film as the imagery and cinematography is hard to ignore.

I didn't use tracing paper when creating this image as i wanted to be really meticulous about the way the animals flowed into each other. Instead using photographs slowly built up the image drawing the animals one by one whilst using the surrounding lines to help me with my placement. 

I found to my surprise that the tiger and zebra were the easiest to draw because of the stripes, where I thought the tiger and zebra would most difficult because of the stripes. But I found that the stripes of the animals really help to show the movement of the animals and the shapes under their skin. 

Once I completed My drawing I inked it and scanned it in to photoshop. Where I added water to the image in photo shop using the brush tool and then taking away parts of to create the raged edges of the water. In this piece I wanted to experiment more with my photoshop skills so I added a dot to the water which I thought worked really well to give a transparent effect. I also added the sun in the background using photoshop.

I feel that this piece of work is a great end to the year for me as for me it is the best piece of work I have ever produced. I think it's not only the best drawing but also the best screen print I have ever done.

When Drawing this piece I wanted to try to make sure that I used my line work and the black within the final screen print to more of an effect. I tried to approach this by adding more small detail to my drawing before the scanning process. as I can now create my layers without losing much detail within my drawings where as before some fine details could be lost. I used dots to create tone within the image, which is a technique I have used before but that I kind of forgot I had in my arsenal.

When it came to screen printing this piece I used my new registration method of first placing a guide in a light yellow/white colour. When I put the orange of the tiger over this it created an intersting yellow effect over the light yellow I had used for my guide, which is an idea I want to explore further within my next prints.