While I lived in Africa, I created drawings in the same style, mostly ink on toned paper, with a few ink washes and colored pencil to add a bit of dimensionality. This drawing goes a bit down a different rabbit hole. Well, maybe not all that far, but it’s a start.
I have wanted to do something with the photo I used as a reference for quite some time, but I never got around to it. One day, while hunting for something to draw, I came across an image of a zebra herd. The thought of drawing all the stripes on an entire herd of zebras made my head spin, so I decided to draw only one. Feeling lazy, I didn’t even draw all of them.
I decided on a very graphic-looking drawing and let the stripes tell the story. Yes, I started the same way, with a quick pencil sketch. After all, I wanted some kind of safety net. One of the biggest innovations in this drawing is that none of the lines that make up the zebra touch. They just float on the page, letting your eye make up the image. When I finished the drawing, I liked the story the stripes told. So, naturally, I had to name this piece Stripes.