Drunken Rabbit Sees a Pink Elephant

Here is a little doodle I did a long time ago to make Laura laugh. This prompted me to look into the origin of the "seeing pink elephants" which comes from Jack London in 1913, who describes one sort of alcoholic in the autobiographical John Barleycorn as "the man whom we all know, stupid, unimaginative, whose brain is bitten numbly by numb maggots; who walks generously with wide-spread, tentative legs, falls frequently in the gutter, and who sees, in the extremity of his ecstasy, blue mice and pink elephants. He is the type that gives rise to the jokes in the funny papers."




















One day I decided to developed it into a full illustration. I originally wanted to turn it into a paper texture piece, but I think it works better like this. I might go back into it and add some lighting effects though (mostly highlights on the rabbit and the pink elephant and then perhaps add a moon beam). I wanted to play with color and have a complete background, which I usually neglect because I find them difficult and I usually just muddy up my illustration with backgrounds. Though I think due to my color choices and the changing levels of details I was able to create a cohesive illustration.