Potatoes On Parade

I really liked how this carica- ture turned out. This is a birthday present for Sharlyn's husband. He's an Idaho potato farmer. Is there any other kind. Oh yeah! There are sugar beet farmers too, but anyway... Sharlyn wanted me to illustrate hubby on a John Deere tractor harvesting potatoes. His real tractor is one of those big ones that has all the comfort of a Cadillac, but Sharlyn thought that putting him atop an older model would look better. I agreed.

I don't know where I got the idea, but the image of potatoes popping out of the ground and marching along with him seemed like a fun concept. Sharlyn liked it and so away I went.

The challenge for me on this particular drawing is that I couldn't find a photo on the internet taken of a tractor at just the right angle. I wanted the tractor to have a commanding, dominate position in the illustration. To do that I want the perspective on the lines of the machine to be at a dramatic angel. So, instead of taking the usual shortcut and tracing a picture, I had to draw this one out pretty much free hand. As I said, I really liked how this one turned out. The only thing I wish could be different is that I would have liked to have more room to draw a whole bunch of potatoes marching along behind him in formation.

I seem to be in a tractor mode of late, since this is the second one of late that I've been asked to illustrate. I've seem to have been drawing a lot of potatoes as well. I guess it was fate that the two themes should come together in one illustration eventually. (I'm so philosophical when it comes to my cartoon work.)

Check out Sharlyn's blog. There are some very nice quilts displayed there - another art form that impresses me.