Beautiful Oops

This Beautiful Oops depicts a lion watching it's prey from the tall grass. The setting is the savanna grasslands where there is tall, yellow-tan grass that lions from those areas can blend in well with. There is a baby elephant in front of the lion, oblivious to the fact that it is watching him. The elephant is following a butterfly and the lion is getting ready to pounce because the elephant does not see him. The elephant and lion are featured in the middle of the page, with the lion being much bigger than the elephant to give it a more scary and suspenseful aspect. The lion is also the same colors as the grass so it does not stand out, unlike the elephant who stands out a lot with it's black skin.

I created this piece using regular graphite pencil at first for the sketch, then moved on to using colored pencils. I chose colored pencils because I figured that it would be easier to create the blending of the lion's mane and the colors of the grass without making it look odd or off. Also, if the piece was done in plain graphite I don't think that it would have as much as an effect as the lion blending into its surroundings and the elephant standing out like an easy target. I also believe that if I had tried to create this with paint or markers or something of the sort it would've been a lot harder to get the grassy look that I accomplished with the colored pencils.

In the beginning, I only originally transformed the ink blot into the elephant, with no intention or idea of what I could add as a background or how to make the piece larger and cover up more white space. Then I accidentally created my own ink blot (a large smudge of black colored pencil I couldn't remove) and transformed that into a nose, and then the idea came to me that I could add more to this piece and to the story of an elephant in the savanna. Not only did the lion make the piece larger, it made it more intimidating and suspenseful, which I enjoy more than a baby elephant simply going for a stroll.