Involuntary Time Off

There is a rapid-spreading wildfire threatening my town. It started yesterday and already has grown to 50,000 acres, forcing evacuation. I am staying about 2 hours away, but I will not have access to any of my work for an undetermined amount of time. Here's hoping my originals and the rest of my house will still be there when I get back.

Daizy

So here she is! I can't believe that the year is almost half over and this is my first charcoal drawing of 2011. I will be offering limited edition prints of this one.

Sold!

I've sold two pieces in the last two months. The first was the Bobcat drawing from a couple years ago, who found a home in New Jersey. The second was the recently-finished Maroon Lightning Clownfish, which will soon be on its way to Florida after the exhibit is over.

WIP - Elephant Almost Done

I did a bit of work today on that leg. It was a slow process of building up the background value, then adding the dark wrinkles, then taking out highlights with the kneaded eraser. It has a little more work to be done, then I can move on to the shoulder area and finally the ear. I don't know why I saved the ear for last, I was planning on doing the bottom right corner last. Not everything happens as it is planned, and that's not necessarily a bad thing. Once I finish the elephant, I think I'll take another pass at the background.

WIP - Elephant Calf Progress

I've made a bit of progress on the elephant. My reference photo doesn't include the trunk, so I think I have a bit more work to do on that, but I think it is going pretty well so far.

WIP - Baby Elephant

This is the start of the elephant calf drawing. In the previous post I showed how I did the daisy with a frisket. I'm using charcoal powder on a chamois to apply the background and the base coat of the elephant. I started in with the eye with the 6B charcoal pencil, a very small blending stump, and the kneaded eraser. I am also using the indent technique to get the eyelashes and hairs visible. From here, I think I'll work down the trunk to get the left side mostly done before I work on the right side.

Drawing Tip #24 - Using Frisket

It has been a long time since I posted a drawing tip, but I want to share with you the benefits of using frisket. I first heard about it in the book Drawing Realistic Textures in Pencil by JD Hillberry. At the time I thought it was an interesting technique, but never thought I'd use it.

Frisket is a clear, sticky paper that you cut into the shape you want and put on your drawing. Once there, you can draw over it as much as you want, pull it off, and you are left with a nice white space in the shape of whatever you cut it into.

The benefit of this is you can draw in your background without having to worry about keeping the edge of your object clean. I never thought I'd need this technique because I mostly deal with fur, which does not have a crisp, clean edge.

However, for the drawing I am working on now, I wanted to include a white daisy with a dark background. The steps I used with the frisket are shown to the right.

It worked wonderfully. The only downside was that it was a little difficult to peel off the paper. I had to use my nails and it kept tearing. But on the whole, I am very happy with the result.