N.E.V.E.R. Give Up!

Tags

africa, african, african theme, animal, animal prints, animals, art, giraffe, giraffes, hide, inspirational, maternal, mom, mother, mothering, nature, safari, sharon cummings, skin, wild animal, zoo, zoo animal, zoo animals

I remember this piece very well.  I almost threw it away.  I spent many hours using Pantone markers and Prismacolor colored pencils getting the details of their fur just right.  I wanted the eyes to have expression and depth.  I was pleased with it’s progress until I tried to create a background.  For some reason the grass and trees weren’t coming out the way I envisioned. They seemed too bright and did not look as good as the animals.  I was crushed!  Then I thought I could save it by making the background solid black.  You can still see some of the black around the mane.  But that didn’t work either.  Finally in a last ditch effort to save all of my hard work, I got my x-acto knife and started the grueling task of cutting the giraffes out.  I had to be so careful.

In the end, I decided to make a separate black border and mounted it that way to present to my teacher for grading.  I got an A and it was selected for the annual school art show.  As a result of it’s exhibition, I sold my very first print in 1993!