Sunday, October 21, 2012

Water Cat

This drawing, though not very big (9"x12"), took a long time. Not as much in actual drawing time as in planning time. Figuring out where those branches were coming from and where their reflections would be, figuring out how to draw the rocks beneath the water in the foreground, figuring out how the waterfall will flow and how to draw it, were all challenges I faced in this piece. In all, I am happy that I was able to accomplish everything I set out to do in this drawing, despite my initial fear of drawing water and the fact that the only real reference I had was for the tiger.

Most of this drawing was done in charcoal, but I used graphite for the rocks and the water in the waterfall. Because graphite is shiney, it does a good job of portraying the wetness of the rocks. I used very hard graphite for the waterfall water and the bubbles at the bottom of the falls because they are so delicate. I did have an issue with the leaves of the tree. At first, it didn't look right because I was trying to draw the background around the leaves, unintentionally leaving a white space around them. To fix the situation, I filled in the background first, then used my electric eraser to remove the spaces for the leaves, then drew in those spaces with my pencils to get the right values.

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