Minnesota to Russia: The MN Zoo's new exhibit.

I should start by saying that the MN Zoo has no idea this is coming their way and no money is being traded here. I've been working on this design for a while and I finally have a colored and version that I'd like to share with you guys and the zoo. If bears could read, I'd show it to them too. This started as a simple design that just kept growing and growing. I really loved the subject matter and kept thinking of new ways to integrate the design. I have been in Japan for about 4 weeks now and I've been working on it as my labor of love every night but the design actually started about 2 months ago and still isn't quite yet finished.

I've been interested in Russian motifs since being influenced and taught by my art mentor, Natalya, who is the real Russian deal, and from reading an amazing story illustrated by John Paul Leon and written by Brett Lewis named, The Wintermen. Every one of these letters is different and is roughly about the size of a letter size sheet of paper. For the Russian letters I used different motifs from Russian architecture. I had the most fun with these two letters:

I used to spend hours at the zoo drawing the animals and had always wanted to make some art for the zoo, so I was really inspired to work on these drawings with my audience being children. My goal was to make a child just as excited as I was when I was at the zoo. I've been way excited to see exhibit since first hearing about it on the MN Zoo website. As of this post, the exhibit will open in 2 days, 8 hours, 20 minutes and 6 seconds. Check out the site to see how long it'll be before you can go to the exhibit.

While working on the text designs was more than enough work, it was not actually where the design started. My intent was to apply the text designs to photos that I took of custom Matryoshka Dolls of three of the exhibits: The Grizzly Bear, Leopard and Sea Otter. When apply the text to the photos I'll post the final images, but for now I'll leave a teaser of the Grizzly Bear.

I've been working on much more than that though. Coming up soon will be images of my initial sketches of the people on the island of Ukashima in Yamaguchi, Japan, and the sketch the I'm thinking of submitting to a request for a comic artist. Peace.
sean.