I was originally going to use scottish wildcats for my competition however after getting my wildcat postcard brief  I have decided to do something different for the competition.
On my trip to Chester Zoo I was taking pictures of pretty much every animal visable. When I got to the owl enclosures I noticed that they were actually pretty impressive animals! I managed to get some really good shots of some of them and thought I would really enjoy doing a project on them and creating some really nice images.

I propose to do my project based on the owls that I have seen in the Zoo and research behind.

Minor setback

Turns out in the process of moving back to Leeds half way through easter my genious self left my bag of work materials that I need for the Wildcat project at home in Manchester. This means the postcards will have to be put on hold for a few days while I can buy/ scrounge some more materials.

On the plus side this means I can crack on with the Wildlife Competition I have planned from the start.

I really like the idea of the background being a wash of colours rather than being detailed representation. Obviously this a still from a video but it could look really effective in a illustration.

Experementing with photoshop and traditional

This was my first attempt at using photoshop in my live project illustrations. The original scan wasn't quite perfect hense the red tints in places. After searching for a LONG time trying to work out how to multiply the image I started colouring it in. The colours are deffinatly not very accurate but I wasn't worrying too much about this right now as I was just using this as a practice piece.
I can now see what Matt was talking about when he told me my work doesn't look finished, this helps. I like how you can still see my drawing underneath the colour because I didn't want my work to turn fully computerised.

This works quite well I think. I like the contrast of the colour added with the sharpness of the graphite pencil.

Here I am experementing with the texture of the fur. I am not so keen on this because I have lost the texture produced by the graphite pencils. There is too much photoshop and it brings the image down.

 

I like this one. I am deffinatly getting better.I wanted to put location with the wildcat to distinguish easier from a tabby cat. I wanted to do this in my traditional style because I think it looks good mixed with the computerised elements of the cat. There is a lot more work to be done however I think I am starting to get depth in the wildcat now.I need to get more accurate wit my drawing though, mainly proportions.

Update

I emailed Steve at Scottish wildcat association and asked him if he had any photos of scottish wildcats that I could use. Getting photos of lots of other wildcats is all well and good however if I used any photos from google I would be viable for copyright. He replied saying that he didn't have any as he gets a proffesional photographer to photograph the animals and if he gave them to me then I would still be usung someone elses photos.

So I have decided to keep in mind descriptions of the scottish wildcat and look at pictures on google however I am going to base my illustrations on the domestic cat and the Saval as these are the most similar to the scottish wildcat.

I am also going to practice my photoshop skills and create these illustrations using traditional methods which I much prefer, but also the computer to try ans get competent and to create a more finished looking piece.

Primary research - Domestic cat

Primary research of Cats - Chester Zoo

Cheetah

 

Serval

 Lion

Jaguar