Backfence Society in Vista is working towards getting an art clubhouse together, and to help fund for it they held this art show, so of course I decided to participate in it as a donation. The theme this time was M A G I C. At first I was going to just try and make a really awesome unicorn, but as you can see that didn’t completely pan out.
When I first started, I thought that Magic was a pretty vague topic. I thought that I would be able to work best with creating a unicorn, because animals are my forte. However, after sketching out several failed attempts, I realized I had to push my piece in another direction.
I started to think about what exactly “Magic” covered. Of course the first thing that comes to mind is fantasy, like Harry Potter-like things. As I kept brainstorming, I thought about all of the different magical creatures that exist. Of course, not in the real life, but more like the ones that exist in media and have had many stories told about them.
Then I started to think about past projects that I’ve completed, and I really liked my Totoro playing cards that I made for the Thumbprint Gallery Ghibli show a year ago. I started to consider that this format would be a nice leaping-off point, and small scale way to be able to tackle more than one magical creature. I also thought about how a lot of magic tricks involve the use of playing cards, so it all came together!
The creatures that I ended up picking were ones that all made an appearance in the Harry Potter series. At least the ones that resembled already existing animals. It took a little bit more effort to get them colored, since I decided to use a watercolor palette that I picked up at Daiso. After some reworking and touchups, I was able to get the cards to how I wanted them to be.
I’m glad to say that this piece ended up being bought at the event, and all the proceeds went to funding the Backfence Society clubhouse!
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