Hear Me Roar

I took some time out of my coral reef to do some charcoal. I had been thinking of this one for some time, and had planned on doing a fur drawing tutorial from it. However, I really don't like how the lioness came out, so I'll have to wait for something else for a tutorial.

This drawing is 17"x14" charcoal on vellum paper. The idea came from the phrase and song title "I Am Woman, Hear Me Roar," hence the female lion roaring. The layout changed dramatically from its conception, from the lioness in complete profile, with a half-background, with just a shadow underneath, etc. I just kept adding features and moving the lion. I'm glad I added the background trees. They are acacia trees from the Serengeti, where lions are prevalent, and drawing them was quite easy. Just a 4B charcoal pencil in sweeping motions for the trunks/branches and in scribbles for the leaves. The distant trees are just scribbles, with 2B vertical strokes here and there to indicate trunks.

The grass is 2B in a random vertical fashion (tip here: blades of grass are not parallel. Keep some randomness in them to make them look real). The sky is a very light layer of 6B in a small circular motion, blended with a chamois that I tried for the first time (love it, by the way). I added the clouds with a kneaded eraser, kind of rolling my wrist around to get a general cloud shape. I added the shadows with charcoal applied with an unsharpened stump.

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