Gum Burst

Ordinarily I don’t do posts like these, but these have an interesting backstory.

Last week’s Illustration Friday topic, Burst (of course, it wasn’t last week’s *yet* when I started), seemed like a good one to try for myself, but I wasn’t initially sure how to go about it. Having been in the Badlands that Friday and having seen some around, my first thought was a grazing bison about to explode, a la Mr. Creosote in “The Meaning Of Life”. Unfortunately, the bison I ended up drawing did not look like it was about to burst. My next thought was a grazing cow (which I also saw a lot of) with an overly full udder, but I felt that wasn’t convincing enough of a burst either.

A few days later, it started to hit me the trip would soon end, and I brought a smiling toy moose into the hotel with me for cuteness. It then hit me to draw the moose making a bubble from gum.

Pencil on white copy paper.

Since the full bubble still did not look enough like it was about to burst, I decided to draw the aftermath the next night.

Pencil on white copy paper.

I felt this was too good an idea not to do in color on bigger paper.

Colored pencil and rollerball pen on standard sketchbook paper.

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