Resplendant

This is the culmination of several weeks of work in my graphic communication class. We had to choose an animal and turn it into a graphic form using the confines of a grid. I choose the resplendant quetzal, a beautiful iridescent bird with incredibly long tail feathers. Next we had to take the first letter in the animals name, and morph it into our logo form in a minimum of sixteen steps.

And finally, we had to compose a poster with these sixteen pieces... a poster which communicates some aspect(s) of our animal. I choose to represent the quetzal in its environment, which is high altitude cloud forests. The paper I used for the background has a swirly cloud like pattern and the large surrounding shapes are intended to evoke an airy forest. I also wanted to express the quetzals fragility by choosing the most delicate shapes to make up its body. In terms of the colours, I choose green for the background because it's a natural and organic colour that is dominant in forests. I choose to use black for my images because I knew it would stand out better than any other colour. Since the quetzal is such a magnificent bird, I wanted it to really pop off the page. I used gouache to paint it, cause black gouache is my hero.