Tuesday, September 16, 2008

Don't Hate Me 'Cause I'm Beautiful

warthog graphite drawing
Oh, the misunderstood warthog, often deemed one of nature's ugliest animals. I actually enjoyed this piece, taking my pencil drawing to new territories. I used a wide variety of graphite pencils: 4H, 2H, H, HB, 3B, 4B, 6B, and 8B, along with a blending stump and an empty mechanical pencil. That's a trick I learned recently: while trying to find a suitable stylus to indent the paper to draw white hairs and fur, I came across another artist who said he uses empty pens - I went with what I have, which is mechanical pencils (thanks to my husband).

The indenting technique is not hard. Use the stylus to scratch the paper where the white fur or hairs will go, then use the pencil (or charcoal, or whatever) over it. The pencil will glide over the indentations and give the appearance of white hair/fur over dark hair/fur (or dark shadows).

Many thanks to Barbara Keith and her photographer Mike Dulaney of the Cincinnati Zoo for the reference photo. The original (14"x11") and prints are available.

6 comments:

Glendon Mellow said...

This is amazing.

I've never heard of indenting the paper before. Interesting.

Is this a tongue in cheek reference to the "lipstick on a pig" stuff we've been hearing about this week? ;-)

Heather Ward said...

Hmm.. maybe I should write a post on indenting? I actually use it a lot, I just don't think I mentioned it before.

No, nothing to do with the lipstick pig, just coincidence (do you hear about all that stuff up there in Canada? I know whom I'm voting for, so I don't really pay attention to the media).

Glendon Mellow said...

Oh yeah, the American elections are always big news. It affects our trade a lot.

We actually are going to the polls ourselves in October, and there have already been articles in our newspapaers about "is the American election overshadowing Canada's?" and that kind of thing.

I'm just excited because the party I usually vote for is being allowed in the television debates for the first time. Which means we'll be watching 5 leaders battle it out.

The strange thing here for us, is the leader of the Bloc Quebecois is always allowed to debate, even though you may only vote for them if you live in the province of Quebec. They're the seperatist party that wants to be their own country.

Glendon Mellow said...

Sorry about the tangent.

I'd love a post about indenting...!

swhiteart said...

That's a fantastic technique! I never thought to use that in my pencil drawing...I may in the future.

Heather Ward said...

Thanks Glendon and swhiteart! I'll put together a post on indenting.