koala Illustration In Watercolour – available
(Original Artwork Available)
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Work continues on my series of favourite Australian animal illustrations for my wonderful client, and were having a blast dreaming up each individual character, designing the pose, story and personality of each animal as we put them into the spotlight one by one. Weve had some whacky discussions and plenty of giggles working on this range and were so happy with how its evolving. Truly, this has been such fun… and so it continues!
Do you know how hard it has been to narrow our selection down to just a handful of our favourite Aussie critters? I tell you what, we are greedy for adorable creatures here in Australia, and with the glut of choice, selecting the few has been the most challenging part of navigating through this project. What a wonderful challenge to have though hey? When it comes to koalas though, its simply an essential ingredient! Youll ALL agree, I am sure. In this, weve actually added a second koala to the group, and im sharing his story with you now.
Koalas are actually quite challenging to paint well. They are basically a comical ball of adorable fluff, simply coloured with tiny eyes and huge black noses, and making them look like something other than a grey blob requires a certain finesse, I think. In these koala studies ive really harnessed the magic of complex colour use to bring their mousy palette to life. Hints of mauve, blue, grey and brown all come together here to delicately render his gorgeous little face, and soon enough he is right there, staring out of the page at me so sweetly. Exhale. I love him already, and we are on track for this beautiful, sweet koala story…. look at his little expression. I just love him already.
With the head of my koala complete, I am happy with the mood, expression, and the all important personality ive captures in my painting so far, and i move on to the body with the same palette and a slightly softer texture to capture his wonderful fur beautifully. We absolutely love his patchy little butt too, mauve grey and a soft, warm, eucalyptus stained glow to the patches of white. Its just such gorgeous colour to work with.
In a seperate illustration I painted him a fun little party hat, which Ive added to the story as a celebration variation, and in just the same way, Ive given him a shadow to ground him when needed. This series, as so many of my illustrations do, give my clients the greatest diversity and application options I can create for them.
And so, my second, ever popular koala painting now joins the wombat illustration the Quokka illustration the platypus illustration the Echidna Illustration and the Magpie Illustration and of course, my most recent Mum and Baby Koala Illustration before it, continuing the styling of this collection into a broad, cohesive, versatile and beautiful series of artworks for my client…. and were loving it, each and every one of the artworks in this series a unique story, and I cm excited now to see what will come next!
If youd like to see more on this, or on many of my commercial illustration projects, come and join me on Patreon for lots of exclusive insights, content and even a range of in depth realistic watercolour painting lessons to enjoy.
*(Apologies for the logo on these images. Unfortunately my work is stolen so often it has become essential to mark and minimise the images here as much as i can)