Last painting of the year from my Acrylics illustration class! I decided to take a more stylized route for this assignment, which was to include a turtle. It was an extremely open assignment, really. It could have to do with anything we wanted as long as there was a turtle in it. As I was doing research on turtles, trying to get some ideas, I kept admiring how cool Alligator snapping turtles look. They are monstrous! So I decided I would paint a turtle monster. I haven’t felt like painting people lately; I wanted to do something more quite and natural than the human world. I wanted to make a fantasy landscape without any people in the scene.
So I made myself a giant turtle. Maybe it’s a forest spirit or maybe its a monster. Maybe it’s a prehistoric beast or maybe it’s an undiscovered species of giant turtle that lives high in the mountains. Either way, this turtle needed to have an environment ripe with adventure. So I drew steep cliffs and foggy mountains in the distance, and a waterfall that spread mist over everything. The giant snapping turtle sits precariously on the edge of a cliff with its mouth ajar. As snapping turtle often chill out with their mouths wide open, ready to lob off any fingers that get to close. Or in this case, birds and pterodactyls. Under the snapping turtle is many smaller turtles. Which, if they were compared to a human, would not be small at all. They just look small resting under the their enormous protector.
This painting was done in pencil, then colored with washes of acrylic ink, and finally, finished with a little colored pencil. With this painting I begin the process of finding myself a style which I will work in when I return to school in the fall.
It’s going to be a busy summer.
