the wild one cyprus
a website project
In 2022 I was asked to illustrate for a website wildonecyprus.com.
The website would provide guidance on food foraging in Cyprus.
The illustrations were for a main mascot character plus some other illustrations for the various website pages.
The Wild One Cyprus character is a mix of mythologies. He is of mixed heritage, part kallikantzaros (καλικάντζαρος), part cicada, part fairy.
He has the donkey-like ears pierced with a couple of hoop earrings. His legs are like a horse or goat and he can run very fast.
His torso and face are more human or elf-like, except that he sometimes grows cicada wings and can fly.
He is hairy and his skin colour is like the red earth from the east of Cyprus, providing perfect camouflage.
a key
Different parts of a plant are edible and we needed a key to indicate which parts can be eaten: leaf, stem, flower, fruit, root or fungi
thistles
there are 19 varieties of thistle that can be foraged in Cyprus. The thistles needed a page to themselves and an illustration to go with them.
Olive oil and lemon are integral in Cypriot cooking.
colour consultant
On the website, the sky in the logo was removed and made transparent.
Five of the shades of the blue sky from the original art were matched to hexadecimal colours. These five colours (a couple duplicated), form the sky blue gradient on the website and on this page.
The website page template colour palette was made up of the earthly tones of the backgrounds and the Wild One himself!
not coffee
A surprising number of plants can be made into a coffee-like drink. Sometimes from roots, dried seed or stem.
Instead of trying to draw a ‘coffee-like drink’, we decided to illustrate the instrument used in most cases to pound the plant into a powder, the traditional Cypriot brass mortar and pestle!
