My latest drawing, Ravine Opossums, took a lot of planning. Once I had the idea in my head of how I wanted the piece to look, I had to figure out how to draw a pretty complicated scene.
The first step was getting the opossums right. Until you really study some photos, you don’t really appreciate what a weird beast the opposum is. When you draw it correctly, it looks like you’ve drawn it wrong. This is a challenge.
The ditched shopping carts were tricky as well. Basically three-dimensional mesh planes, the carts took a lot of sketching to figure out. In this case, it was the sad little wheels that brought the drawings to life.
Then there was the beer cans. I wanted the brand to be recognizable, but also localized to my own western Canadian history. It was pretty easy to settle on the busy and colourful Old Style Pilsner can.
