Sydney M. Pertl

Currently working on a few projects simultaneously, but I'm especially proud of this little guy. Any banana slug can become a snail with a little hard work and innovation.

This is for a Farmers Market poster I've been working on for a neighborhood very near and dear to my heart. The banana slug to represent our quirky and lovable culture here in the Pacific Northwest, the Farmers Market haul inside the shell are his favorite foods (or really just some of mine, haha), and the constructed shell of wood and cloth is a shout out to the artists, creators, and fabricators of the Georgetown neighborhood ♥︎ The full poster and even more behind the scenes info will be shared as soon as the final version is approved!

The first picture is a composite of two separate paintings - for the final poster, I created nine separate paintings, which allows me to move things around to visually accommodate the corresponding text.

Second is the sweet sluggo in his original painting. I'm getting pretty excited about compiling a whimsical creatures illustration series for a show in the future. Come to think of it, I do have a fair few to share ;)

The final picture shows part of the process. Watercolor, of course, blends together with other colors when wet, so each distinct color had to be masked separately. While I sometimes prefer masking fluid, I found that cutting custom-fit shapes from paper tape serves my purposes for this project better. The greens were painted first, then masked (you can see some of the tape left on the green pumpkin curlicue), then the wooden staves were taped while the yellows and oranges were painted. This photo is of me pulling some of the tape up right before I paint the wood colors!

Hard at work again, making up my own cowboy-nouveau font, and pondering such questions as, if a slug wore a cornucopia, would it need to be positioned on a howdah for balance? The two things are, oddly enough, related. Stay tuned.