Wednesday, June 27, 2007

The pretty peacock and her chicks

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© 2007

I'm well aware that the female peacock is brown and isn't even called a peacock, but I don't care. This is a children's story and I want to draw a vibrant and colorfull bird. Besides, my illustrations aren't realistic anyhow.

The mother peacock is sad because someone has vandalized her house. I'm still debating if her chicks should be sad too. I was looking at it as if they were too young to understand, that way the illo isn't filled with sadness, but I'm not convinced that's the way to go.

Even though she's a peacock, I decided not to show her tail feathers because she's sad and I thought her tail feathers being down could reflect that. Later on in the story she's very happy and I thought I could illustrate her big fancy tail on that page to help convey her happiness.

The space on the left side is for text.

4 comments:

Bruce said...

It's great that you can show these sketches and show the progession. That grumpy otter is one funny dude and I think that the expression that you have on the chicks is just right. It's that glazed over 'wtf' look of confusion that they would probably have.

Jacqueline Hudon-Verrelli said...

That's good feed back. Thanks Bruce.

I think the otter is my favorite so far. Possibly because of his hat...

DINTOONS said...

interesting story here, and quite a poignant portrayal... would be nice to show a couple of kids holding on to their mom, with the same confused expression of course...
i like the well-rounded look of the she-peacock... the kid with the long pointy head looks weird in a funny way! :o)

Jacqueline Hudon-Verrelli said...

When I was drawing the chicks I was just making random circles for their heads and that pointy headed chick was a circle gone wrong. I was going to erase it, but then I thought he was kind of cute and children come in all shapes and sizes.