Trashcan Sheep

For this project we had to create a composite figure. This is when an artists uses two nouns, usually creatures but not always, and combines them together into one figure. Everyone in my class wrote down two nouns and then we drew randomly and had to create the composite. The two words I received were trashcan and sheep. I did not know how I wanted to make them at first into one thing, so I drew a sheep in a trashcan.

I started out by sketching the trashcan and sheep in pencil, making the sheep popping out of holes in the trashcan. This was the best way I could come up with them being combined. After this, I colored the background. I added grass and flowers around the trashcan to give it some depth. I then added blue hatch marks in the sky with colored pencil. I wanted to try to push my mixed media even further, so I decided to add pen as well. I used the technique of stippling, which is just using black dots to add shadows, for the trashcan part. I liked how this looked, but it was quite time consuming. I erased all the pencil lines.

My original plan was to stipple the sheep as well, but I thought that would not contrast enough. I decided to use colored pencil. This was difficult because I could not get as much texture and contrast as I wanted due to the texture of the trashcan. I ended up doing too many layers in the eyes, hoping to make them look more realistic, to a point that the sheep looked more unrealistic.