Work in progress Oranges Are Not the only Fruit

Yesterday I was working on a drawing for Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit. So this is a little preview or work in development. The image was of an orange demon that Jeanette sees when she is held in confinement for over 30 hours and goes a little stir crazy. I thought that the concept of using including a demon was too good not to include in an image to respond to the book. It allowed me to be really playful with the image.

When Jeanette sees the demon she has a conversation with it about her sanity. Depending on the colour of the demon also reflects different emotional challenges. In her case she is challenged  a beguiling demon.  I loved the idea of different demons having different colours to reflect different negative or sinful desires which we can inhabit. When I researched for references for the demon I can across this incredible image of different demons.

 
Initially I wanted to create a demon which had reference to older images of what a demon looked like. So that it could be believed that it was something that Jeanette had seen in a book. All the images were too sinister for me though, as I felt she would have recoiled or been frightened by those demons whereas the demon she was faced with was more alluring.  

So I ended up sketching a drawing from scratch and came up with something that drew from references from Gremlins and dragons features.

                            I’m still struggling with hands and need to practice those more with references, it’s harder to reference when the creature is mythical though! What was fun with the image though is that I managed to incorporate several different types of scales from image sources and included them into the picture. I only wanted to include them subtly to give the demon a bit of texture on the skin.

Once I had coloured in the creature I decided to play around with some of the artistic filter on Photoshop to change the overall effect. I usually avoid using filters unless it’s for a specific area. I really liked the water colour affect (which is at the top) because it looked like the older ink drawings of demons. I didn’t however think the demon in this style would translate well once I incorporated it into the main image. So I continued to play and found that actually the pastel affect was really suitable because it made the demon look like a drawing from an illustrated child’s novel. 

I did this because I thought she would imagine a demon which provide for some (slightly perverse) comfort. The church and Jeanette’s mum had strike an intervention upon Jeanette (I believe she’s closer to nineteen at that stage? It’s not explicit). At the time of the book it’s still the 1980’s so I doubt she would have had the ability to google an image of a demon but she may have come across an illustrated version?

I’ve made the image of the demon more translucent in the final image, as it is (in my mind) imaginary. It could really be there as magical realism? This would give the book entirely different context, either way it was a fun passage which I felt was worth capturing in my response to the text.  This won’t be appearing in a video for some time yet. You’re getting a preview here right now, if you’re here for the first time, please check out my channel. Tell me what you think of it just click here and it will take you there.