The Man Cub Final

So I almost feel like I interpreted the piece too literally, but of course who likes their final paintings. I feel like Bagheera needed much more love in the painting. But it was very fun to experiment on stuff. I've been in conversations with many of my other artist friends, seeing what they used and tried some new stuff. As always the painting was mainly all oil.

the final painting

The idea for the piece is of course from my favorite books by one of my favorite authors, Rudyard Kipling's the Jungle Books. I wanted to show how throughout the books Mowgli fights with the want to become a wolf like his family, but he never will be no matter how many time he puts on the "clothes" of the wolf. And coming from him are his experiences, his stories. All of the characters that make him. Rikki-tikki tavi, Kaa, Raksha, Baloo, Hathi, Bagheera, and his enemy Shere-Khan.

Mowgli and Raksha, you can see I didn't do a good job stitching this together in PS, but I plan on doing it better eventually

I did the drawing all in pencil first at the final size, used really soft pencils and ebony pencils. Then I scanned it. I printed it out on watercolor paper on Kev's epson. The mounted it on Masonite. I first started in watered down acrylics getting the colors and base down. Then worked in pastel, colored pencil, oil paint, and finally markers. I did that about 3 times. Got my hands dirty too. It was fun.

Total time was about 8 hours painting over 2 days. Drawing was done in one evening. The final concept and positioning of everyone took me weeks to decide on. I finished this quite a few weeks ago, but wanted to wait for the opening before posting, the opening was last night (Friday May 1st) and will be up until May 23rd.

Shere Khan in his angry goodness

I really like Raksha (the mom wolf) and the texture in Hathi (elephant), but the colors of Hathi are too cartoony I think. I had a lot of fun drawing Shere-Khan and all of their paws. I love hands and feet.

painting ready to be hung at Gallery 1988 SF

I'm very excited to continue doing work with both Gallery 1988s here is a link to all the wonderful paintings done for this show.
http://1988btp.blogspot.com/