Circus Acrobat

We had a snow day with last week so – with no school for the kids and no work for me – I had much greater flexibility in my schedule.  I, therefore, took a bit of time to work in my art journal.  I used an Art Journal Adventure prompt as inspiration.  The prompt was “circus” which was going to be a challenge for me.  I have explained it in detail in a previous blog post so I won’t rehash it all here but I have a serious phobia of clowns that is related to a milder phobia of circuses – one that is deep-seated enough that I have never taken my kids to a circus.  I can, however, deal with acrobatic acts outside the context of a circus.  I think, for instance, that I would enjoy seeing Cirque du Soleil.  I like drawing figures inside circles for some reason so I drew some circles on the page as a starting point.  I then pulled up a few images of acrobats in google and combined a few influences to come up with the pose.  I associate circuses with bold, bright, primary colours so that gave me my palette.  I think the finished illustration suggests circus enough to fulfil the brief of the prompt while not triggering my phobias.