Thoughts on art...

Yesterday I was really trying to explore myself as an artist. I have been trying to fine-tune my skills for years, but haven't really come up with a series, a theme for my art. A true artist has a "big idea".
So last night, as I was trying to go to sleep (heat is broken, so it was very cold), I had my lightbulb moment!
Anyone that knows me, knows I love animals. Why? I love studying them, watching them, seeing how they relate to humans, how they interact with each other. Even as a little girl I recall comparing classmates to an animal that has similar characteristics (always kept that to myself!!) Anyway, so then I started brainstorming on how I can approach this in my art. Man vs. Nature, The Language of Animals, Are we Animals?
I had this vision of an orangutan at the bottom of a canvas and painting at the top. Simple, black contour drawing or simplified at the very least.
Maybe the illusion of blood at the top, strokes of vines throughout...I haven't decided yet. I traced a photograph with tracing paper of an orangutan and wasn't inspired. I played with some filters and manipulation of the photograph in photoshop and got a pretty simple version of my orangutan.
I then thought about a transfer process. Take the printed, manipulated version of the orangutan right out of the printer while still wet from ink, place on bottom of canvas and wet the back with water to transfer. The first one I didn't eliminate background, so more ink transferred than I wanted. I erased all of the background of the photo, only leaving the orangutan, and this is what I got. I am pleased. Now I have to think of what to do with the rest.

Photos:
1st one is a robot that our friend Neal donated to our collection of toys pointing at the work in-progress on the computer.

2nd is the comparison of the original photo to the manipulated one. I had to flip the picture so it would appear correctly on the canvas.

3rd is the canvas with the orangutan. I went over lines with a black marker to pop them out.