Illustration Friday - Artificial

This week 'Illustration Friday,' presented its participants with the word "Artificial." So many things in our world today are artificial.  We have artificial flavors, artificial flowers, artificial sweeteners, artificial grass, artificial fibers, and if you've ever been to Disneyland, you've even seen a whole menagerie of artificial animals and even artificial people. As I thought about all of these things, the first thing that popped into my head was an artificial rabbit, specifically a statue of a rabbit made from concrete.  Maybe I've had rabbits on the brain lately.  I see them almost every day in my yard and when we were in Wisconsin a few weeks ago, we were able to get up close to an unafraid little bunny (I used some of the photos I shot of him as reference for the bunny in my piece).  At the same time as I was mulling over ideas in my head, I came across a wonderful illustration from a Polish children's book. I'm sorry I don't know who the artist is, but you can see the image below. It shows a rabbit, sitting against a orangish sky amongst a group of flowers.  I love the simplicity of the composition and the graphic stylization of the rabbit and flowers.

I spent a long time working on the background, trying to get the flowers right. I was striving for something graphically elegant and simple like this Polish illustration, but my penchant for realism kept pushing me to add more shading, detail, etc. So, I ended up straying quite a ways from my inspiration.

Below you can see where I've begun working on the background.  You can also see my original sketch which I had on a separate layer.  As I went along, I decided to make the foreground darker, not only to make it a bit more dramatic, but to add some contrast to the evening sky. After I finished the image, I also decided to crop it into a more vertical format.

Here is the little bunny that we saw in Wisconsin.  We had stopped at a scenic overlook for a distant view of the "House on the Rock," and as we walked from the car to the viewpoint, we saw this tiny little guy having his evening meal. He didn't seem at all afraid of us. I was able to get within just a few feet of him for lots of picture-taking.

UPDATE: Since I posted this yesterday, I went back into my image and made a few changes.  I felt the 'real' rabbit was too light and seemed to be floating against the background so I darkened him a bit, and added a little more detail in his fur.  I also added some additional plants and grass details.  You can see the updated version on the right.