RhinoInk Illustrations - Black and White

illustration Intro

acrylic

black & white

grapite & digital

colour pencil

felines

character development

caricature

figures

goats

rhinoceroses

totems

cupcakes

doodle

macabre

watercolor

oliver

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Black and White Illustration

Melissa Etheridge
Created for Illustration Friday, the word of the week was 'Similar' and the first thought that ran through my mind was her song "Similar Features". I needed some practice drawing people anyway so I thought 'Why not go with it?' Illustration Friday is great because it provides insentive to exercise artistic skills but it also provides oppertunity to think up creative solutions.

Egyptial Mask

Rhinoceros Seed Package

Seeds of Inspiration - was also created for Illustration Friday.
I thought, "what if you could grow your own rhinos?"
As I was drawing the seed package it occured to me that this would make a great self-promo piece. All those spaces for contact info, the rattle & scent of seeds, the tactile sensation of picking up the package... A total sensory experience.

pheonix

Egyptian Mask - (right) Perspective experiment.

Phoenix Soaring - (above) Another illustration Friday project, I wanted to challenge myself by visualizing and drawing without reference material. I imagined I was another bird flying above the one shown looking down.The brain has a funny way of inventing it's own visual language.

Fairy Cat - (lower right) Just for fun.

Spirit Takes Flight - Christopher Reeves

Spirit Takes Fight
A montage of individuals with assorted disabilities.
They are all represented by alternative images associated with flight.
Stephen Hawkings - space / the astronaught. Christopher Reeves - Superman. The model / athelete (forget her name but she does track & field) - angelic. The birds & butterfly were included to drive home the idea that the theme is "flight". The swallowtail butterfly is also a symbol of a warrier spirit.

"Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.
It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us.
We ask ourselves, who am I to be - brilliant, gorgeous, talented and fabulous?
Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God.
Your playing small doesn’t serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so small
that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us.
It’s not just in us, it’s in everyone.
As we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others."

- Marianne Williamson, 1992
1994 Inaugural Speech - Nelson Mandela

Horse with Flowing Main - Ink vs digital

India Ink
& Digital Play

The Stylized Horse Rearing (left) was created while experimenting with an image that I was preparing for a t-shirt.

Black & White Conte on Grey Canson Paper

Memes Get In Your Head - (right)
Ever get a song stuck in your head and you just can't shake it.
Ever notice how often those little ditties are from commercials?
Those are memes. What if aliens are using memes to control us?

Nanobots Run Amuck - (above)
Nanobots are robots that are so small they can be injected
with a suringe.They would be prorammed to heal what ails us. What if they got out of control?

Hockey Equipment Still Life - (lower right)
An exercise in rendering 3 dimentional objects. The grey of the paper is the mid-tone while white & black conte define the lights & darks of the equipment forms.

Disco Rhino & RhinoTotem These illustrations were created by carefully cutting an image out from a single circle or square of paper. The cut pieces were then flipped horizontally and re-assembled to form the negetive of the original image.

Experimental Mark Making

Toothbrush Ducks
It's neet to see what you can mak when you relinquish control. These were rendered with an old tooth brush dipped in in india ink. Ok, I'm a colntrol freak. I added a few more feathery loops with my quill pen.

These drawings inspired the cover art for a cook book.

duck in flight

Composition Experiment:
This series of images demonstrates
assorted compostions:
random, centered, diagonal, assymetrical...
To make the assignment feel like a cohesive project I chose to illustrate the poem "Sing a Song of Six Pence".
I was also influences by the writings of Wilber Smith and his stories about big game poaching in Africa.

sing a song of six pence

a pocket full of rye

four and twenty blackbirds

baked in a pie

when the pie was opened

the birds began to sing

now wasn't that a dainty dish

to set before the king

the king was in the counting house

counting out his money

the queen was in the parlor

eating bread and honey

the maid was in the garden

hanging out the clothes

along came a blackbird

and snipped off her nose

How to Fasten a Garter Belt The assignment was to generate a series of illustrations that demonstrated "how to" do something. I opted for something a little more risque as opposed to the usual: how to cook KD, how to tie a shoe, how to do origami. I liked the graphic shapes in this series. It was rendered with ink. The pattern of the stockings were created by photocopying stretch lace.