For my project I need to create as many plants, animals, landscapes, forests, geological formations etc as I can as examples of my own practice for answering my research question for the year. After my previous blog post Research: Weird looking Plants (18/01/12) looking at some examples of existing and very unusual looking plants and fungi, I started to sketch out some ideas. I had already learnt through writing this post that nature can look very bizarre so I felt I was free to create some quite wacky and unusual plants, but I decided for this first attempt to base the design on an existing plant- the Water Lettuce.
The Water Lettuce was first discovered in Africa but now can be found in nearly all tropical or subtropical waterways. The plants leaves float on the water’s surface with its roots submerged below the surface.
This is my adaptation of the common water lettuce. I have vastly increased its size from around 30cm to 30meters. I have also transformed the root structure from a few fibrous tendrils to thousands. The main adaptation I made to the plant is that it no longer dwells in water- the large pod found nestled in the centre of the leaf formation contains a helium-like gas which the plant naturally produces, allowing it to rise into the air becoming a floating land plant.
I have designed many more details for this plant as to how it feeds, reproduces and how humans could use it but I will add these at a later date when I have produced a visual to show them. For now here is the Digitally Painted plant (which still needs a name):
My friend Cassie Peng (cassiepeng.blogspot.com) has been teaching me how to do Digital Painting in Photoshop. There are still a few things I want to work on with this image like texturing etc but I will sort those out later. As a first draft I am really pleased with how this image turned out- thanks Cassie you’re a good teacher!
No comments:
Post a Comment