WhatchamaDRAWit

My prompt for this "whatchamaDRAWit" was to create a playground for animals. I imagined a jungle-themed playground or a “jungle gym” featuring an ape swinging from monkey bar-type vines, a bird flying through hoops, a trapeze and platforms for big cats to traverse, and mini tube slides for mice. I went with a jungle theme because when I was younger, I played a game with my neighborhood friends where we pretended we were lost in the jungle and our playground was the trees and the swings were the vines, so I associate this memory with an animal playground.

I created this image using graphite, Prismacolor markers, and a Sharpie gel pen on multi-media paper. I began by sketching out the general layout of the scene being sure to include a background in addition to a mid and foreground. By using different line directions and weights, I created texture; You can see a contrast in texture between the platforms vs. the tree leaves. After outlining the sketch with a gel pen, I went in with markers to give it color and dimension. The primary color in this jungle scene is green, so as I went along I was sure to layer colors or do several shades of the same green to create depth and interest. My next steps for this piece could be adding a darker shade elsewhere in the scene so that the dark mound of dirt at the bottom of the frame doesn’t stick out so much.