Mouse Illustration

I was recently commissioned by a colleague of my boyfriend to create a picture of a mouse to match one she already had, which were to be gifts for her husband. The one she has is a lino cut so I needed to produce a black and white, graphic image to match. This is not my usual style but I welcomed the challenge.

I started by sketching a few composition ideas and then going over them in fineliner. She prefered the top one but asked if it could be a night time scene.

To try that composition with a black background instead of white I just photocopied my drawing and coloured in the background. I really like the contrast between the dark background and the white grass and wheat.

I drew out the image to the requested size - 10 x 10 cm - and painted it just using black acrylic paint which would give me the bold, black background I was after.

I found it a bit trickier to create the sketchy lines I had made with a pen in my initial sketch with a paint brush, so I tried using a dip pen and ink to create the same image. I prefer how the fur looks in this one, but the background isn't as bold.

In the end I went with paint, which was my boyfriend's preferance, and produced a final image to fix a few things that were bugging me about the first one. As I could trace the shapes from my initial sketch, painting a new image only took about an hour.