Assignment 1 Say Hello

I started by identifying keywords to describe myself.

Myself
Calm

Interests
Birds
Photography
Art
Painting
Films

Inspiration
Nature
Birds
Other Artists
Quiet

Materials
Watercolour
Pastels (chalk)
Digital Sketching
Pencil

Already doing a very similar exercise in Graphic Design Core Concepts I wanted to try a different angle but inevitably the description of myself was very similar.
My initial idea was nature and birds and a possible introduction to my new found love of chalk pastels. An idea that would eventually be dropped to be replaced by watercolour, something that I am much more comfortable in.

I filtered through hundreds of my own photographs and sketched from the following photo:
http://www.pbase.com/johncostello/image/134871466

I explored the idea of showing the front of my camera lens surrounded by leaves and a bird or 2 around or above, I liked the idea but didn't feel capable enough create a version of myself that I would be happy with.
On the right side of the page I have myself taking a photo and played with the idea of including art materials but again felt it wasn't something I wanted to continue with. Below that was a doodle which I later coloured in with watercolour of an owl and a non pre-sketched watercolour of half of my binoculars - an idea I wanted to test just in case I wanted to use it in my finished piece.

Below is a continued sketch of my binoculars, I later came back to this and added a zoomed view of my telescope and a paintbrush.
I looked forwards to more inspiration and had recently been viewing concept art from animated movies. A recent film I watched called UP was fantastic and the concept art was just as good. The main character in the film I somehow identified to and felt the sketches of him showed his character so well that I wanted to include him. Just above the telescope was a perfect slot for him to fit.
I also really admire environment design for movies and really fell for the warmth of one of the scenes from UP.
These character sketches and environment designs can be seen below - all reference was taken from http://livlily.blogspot.se

My final piece was re-sketched on to 100lbs watercolour paper in pencil and then outlined in Pen & Ink, this is something I really wanted more practice with. A few small mistakes were made but something that can be rectified with some higher quality pen and a wider range of nibs (currently only owning a pen that is a little loose and 2 nibs). There is an overly thick line above the scope and around the left edge of the binoculars that is to me rather distracting. Same applies for some texture lines in the rocks in the distances and around the characters eyes.
Once that was done I added multiple washes and layers of watercolour resulting in the finished piece.

My main message with this image was my passion for the outdoors and some of my tools I use to study nature and my secondary interest in art, cartooning, film and the crossovers between them. The path and fence doesn't really convey any message but I felt adding that would create a more balanced piece.