Jessica Watson's profile

Super Sleuths

Jessica Watson
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Super Sleuths
Collective Noun Project
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The objective of this project was to choose an animal collective noun and illustrate it while including the first letter of the collective noun in the composition. 
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Process
 
 
To start off the process I did 15 thumbnail sketches of the collective nouns that were the most appealing to me. The few thumbnails that I liked the most were "Ballet of Swans", "Sleuth of Bears", and "Team of Ducks".
 
printmaking lino linocut collective noun bear bears print sleuth of bears detective children's book illustration sleuth animal process
I decided to go with "Sleuth of Bears" because I loved the concept of making the bears appear as detectives. I looked up references of brown bears and did a few sketches to get a basic feel for how bears look from different angles.
printmaking lino linocut collective noun bear bears print sleuth of bears detective children's book illustration sleuth animal process
I then started to play around with props that the bears could use, such as a magnifying glass and detective's hat.
printmaking lino linocut collective noun bear bears print sleuth of bears detective children's book illustration sleuth animal process
The characters in the above sketch are what I decided to base my final piece off of. 
The next step in my process was to continue to develop the final composition. I sketched out three bears and went over them with marker to get a feel for how I would carve them into lino for my print. 
 
After that I drew a more clean sketch of the bears. 
printmaking lino linocut collective noun bear bears print sleuth of bears detective children's book illustration sleuth animal process
I scanned the sketch into the computer and traced over the lines in Photoshop, which can be seen in the image below.
printmaking lino linocut collective noun bear bears print sleuth of bears detective children's book illustration sleuth animal process
Next I started stylizing the characters and adding more line weight to the drawing so that I could easily trace it onto lino and visualize how the illustration would print.
printmaking lino linocut collective noun bear bears print sleuth of bears detective children's book illustration sleuth animal process
After drawing some more, I decided to modify the composition by removing the detective badge, as seen in the composition on the above right. 
After filling in the entire drawing, I arrived at the piece below.
printmaking lino linocut collective noun bear bears print sleuth of bears detective children's book illustration sleuth animal process
I realized that the bear on the right looked awkward and decided to modify the piece. 
 
I removed the lines at the top of the drawing and replaced them with a solid color. I also inverted the color of the letter "S" because I felt that when it was black it was easily lost in the composition. I added the paw prints and the line around the letter "S" to help with eyeflow. Finally I changed the style of the bears' eyes because I felt that they looked off in the first piece. 
The drawing below is the final composition that I used for my print.
printmaking lino linocut collective noun bear bears print sleuth of bears detective children's book illustration sleuth animal process
The next step in my process was to transfer the drawing onto the lino using carbon paper. 
 
I cut out the lino and began the printmaking process.
printmaking lino linocut collective noun bear bears print sleuth of bears detective children's book illustration sleuth animal process
Final
printmaking lino linocut collective noun bear bears print sleuth of bears detective children's book illustration sleuth animal process
printmaking lino linocut collective noun bear bears print sleuth of bears detective children's book illustration sleuth animal process
Super Sleuths, 2015
Super Sleuths
Published:
Jessica Watson's profile

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Jessica Watson's profile
Chicago, IL, USA

Super Sleuths

A linocut print featuring the animal collective noun "sleuth of bears".

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Attribution, Non-commercial, No DerivativesAttribution, Non-commercial, No DerivativesAttribution, Non-commercial, No Derivatives