Illustration class - Portrait of a famous person with an animal

The purpose of this project was to have a piece in our portfolio that shows our rendering skills. So we had to choose someone recognizable and throw in an animal that represents this person somehow.

About the process.

It's interesting how sometimes when you get stuck, a slightest push in a different direction makes your mind finally work and generate new ideas. I was dreading this project for a long time. I didn't like the people that came to mind. I couldn't pair them with interesting animals. Everything seemed boring. And then I mentioned Dali to our teacher and she said, you can put him into one of his paintings. And finally my rusty "wheels" started turning. Still I didn't know what animal I should use. Thought about a  rooster, but that image was stuck in my head b.c. when you do a google search on Dali, there is one photo of him with a rooster on his shoulder.  Didn't want to be influenced by that. So I looked through some books and found this empty lion head in one of his paintings  and thought it would be cool to do something like this.

Showed it to the teacher and she said this looks too cute. And he was a crazy man. Maybe an insect? And then my wheels turned a little faster, thinking, crazy man... eccentric... huge ego... something very noticeable and weird looking.  A lion fish seemed to fit the profile - crazy looking, bright, and poisonous.  Next sketch looked like this. 

It's strange how sometimes you draw and redraw one thing 100 times and cannot get it right, and other times the first sketch is your final sketch. Once I settled on the idea, it all came together.
So then after some photoshop and tracing paper manipulations the image was transferred to the illustration board.

And then came out the acrylics. At first I thought that I'll be the coolest kid in class and do mine in full color (the assignment was black & white plus one color). But then I realized that I would have to imitate Dali. With acrylics. On an illustration board. In a weeks time. And decided against it. 

So I started the underpainting and created this sad looking man. 

Working on an illustration board (as opposed to a canvas) was a bit frustrating at first. Turned out that paint behaves quite differently on it. So we fought for some time, acrylics and I. But eventually I got used to it more or less. And by adding more details and the mustache made the sad man look more like Dali. 

Then came the fish, couple ants and the magazine title (also part of the assignment). 

And then I realized the composition isn't quite there. And you can't see the ants. So I spent some more time on it. And finally decided I was happy enough, especially that it was time to leave for critique. 

And here it is on a pretty black background.