2/22

So around this time last year, I painted two pictures for my parents to give them as gifts when I went to MD during a break in classes. I have always personally favored these pictures and liked them a lot more than most of my other ones. Both of the pictures are below. The Rhino stuck in the tree with the boy was made for my Dad and the girl jumping rope was made for my Mom. They are pretty simple and although I used some random references I found online or from personal pictures, I feel they were some of the first couple pictures I painted that I began to start building a full composition and atmosphere. Anyways, here are those two pictures:

During the process of creating the two, I did a completely different sketch for my dad than what I ended up painting. The first sketch was simply a boy standing on a pier and looking out to water while ships floated above, one actually looks as if it's going down or about to crash. I scrapped the idea because it just wasn't very fun, not to mention the sketch was not drawn out well, and eventually came up with the rhino idea, which I don't think I really even sketched out before starting. This is the original sketches for my dad and mom's pictures:
My sister looked through my sketchbook over the summer and for some reason really liked the original one for my dad. Since she was always asking for me to paint here something I figured it would be nice to make her something for her birthday/anniversary this past weekend since I would be in MD. I did another quick rough sketch of the boy scene and again didn't like it. Instead I replaced him with a younger girl, made a more active ocean and a more fairytale like scene. This is that sketch:

I didn't really like the sinking/breaking pier idea much so when I transferred it onto the watercolor paper I replaced it with a rock. Here is the picture after transferred and drawn out in pen.

After taking time to figure out colors and such I finally came up with a finished product that I was happy with. I wanted to keep this picture similar to the ones created for my parents the year before, style-wise and theme wise I guess, I also threw on a little corner border like the others had to make them all match. Here is the finished product.