Clare Kelly Illustrator | Koala is King

2015
Watercolour Illustration

Koala is King

Kola is King

The Koala is King waterecolour (paint and pencil) illustration was developed as a character for an upcoming children's book. The concept was to create a realistic and emotive caricature without making the Koala look like a caricature. The orginal was painted onto 300gsm soft textured paper, 29cm X 40cm (international paper size A3).

The koala is an arboreal herbivorous marsupial native to Australia. It is the only extant representative of the family Phascolarctidae and its closest living relatives are the wombats. The koala lives almost entirely on eucalypt leaves and they have a very low metabolic rate for a mammal, which is why they can sleep for up to 20 hours a day.