Illustration Friday, Jungle Theme

This week's Illustration Friday theme was "jungle" and I was back at the drawing board early in the week and then again mid-week.  I was back and forth on what to do, but then I saw this poster by A.M. Cassandre, the French illustrator, painter, and commercial artist.

I really like the airbrush texture in his work, and wanted to see if I could somehow capture a bit of the grittiness in my own digital work.  Some of what bugged me about the spring horse illustrations of last week was that I couldn't capture the right texture.

Another thing I wanted to address was the lack of variety in the spring horse illustration.  It felt a bit blocked.  Maybe it was too much time on the digital work from the get-go, and not enough sketching.  This time, I had a goal of illustrating 20 different elements in one illustration.  I got close... I illustrated 16 different elements.  Baby steps!  For subject matter, I picked my fave jungle creatures and rolled with it.  This sounds corny, but I tried not to try so hard.

Okay, that's all for now!

Here's my sketch in case you wanted to see how this started.

one of the sketches for "jungle"