Shithouse

This is a piece I really like. It was originally going to be drawn with a fox in a straight jacket, however, after having a better concept for the fox, (and not liking to repeat myself) I decided to ignore the fox for this piece.
The issue was then, I didn't have an animal to replace it.

I did some searching on the internet and came across an urban dictionary term, that went like this: "Crazy like a shithouse rat!"
It's an Americanism to express when someone is a little more than just crazy. It popped a great visual in my head, as soon as I read it. So, I started at sketching it up. I had previously drawn a cartoon character wearing a straght jacket, and always liked the idea of drawing it in more detail, (call me crazy).

So, if you look below you will see some of the sketches and development. It was quite an easy drawing to do. The only issue I had was the outhouse. However, I have been recently using SketchUp to model and place 3d objects to reference for the artwork. You can see that below. So, once I had everything in the right place, I printed it out and transfered it to Bristol paper and rendered as a pencil sketch.

The final phases was the rendering in photoshop, to give the colour and form. I did this a little more strict in the contrast levels this time, as I wanted it to give an edge more than be soft.

Posted on Aug 20, 2013

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