SEWE Southeastern Wildlife Exhibition // Save the Date Illustration for U.S. Magazine

In July, I was approached by a US magazine who needed an illustration to open up their calendar of events section.

They wanted to depict the Southeastern Wildlife Exhibition which is held annually in Charleston, South Carolina. The exhibition celebrates all things wildlife and there is a huge focus on different mediums of fine wildlife artwork.

The brilliant concept they presented me with was "a fine art frame with different flora and fauna emerging from it"
As you can imagine, this one illustration was a lot of work but a dream to work on. I first needed to research South Carolina's wild plants and animals. Bears, foxes, deer...eee! Once I had established that I was working with the correct species, I was ready to work on placing them all inside the frame.

Also held at the event is a Dock Dogs competition, where sporting dogs run and jump into water to retrieve toys, competing for the title of farthest jump. I was therefore asked to also include a dock dog in the mix. (I had not heard of the amazing "Dock Dogs" this brief, and I loved what I learned so much that I ended up creating more work on this just for my own fun, (not to mention practice), more on this in another post).

Below is the progression of the project from concept sketches to finished illustration.

Concept progression from first roughs to final drawing in three stages:

The final illustration:

 

This piece was so much fun to work on, can you tell that I was enjoying myself!? That said - I also learned a lot from it. You can see more rough/sketch work for this project on my Facebook page here.

Details:

 

All images are (C) AmyHolliday 2013, please do not use without permission.