Circus Boy

This is for my digital Illustration class/ NAVS (for animals).  Not many would know, but I modeled the boy after the kid from Circus Boy who later grew up to be one of the Monkeys.  It was a TV show where this kid lived with a circus, I don't know too much else about it. But the theme of this project was "Speak for the Animals" and everyone else has done an ape or some type of animal with a closeup on his mouth, the mouth stitched up, or looking really sad with a closed mouth. I wanted to do a more illustrative approach that could work for a children's book.

I'm also trying something new, a hybrid of traditional and digital media.  I was inspired by Corey Godbey and studied his blog to figure out how he got his images.  Look him up if you haven't.

I start off with a smooth graphite and digitally color it with and overlay and multiply layer.  It's so much faster this way and I still get to work traditionally.  And the watercolor textures were done really loosely on cheap bristol paper (im out of paper now) with black ink and then used as a multiply layer.

Graduation coming soon!