Tuesday, October 30, 2012

"Work In Progress" - A Self-Portrait


I was able to finish this self-portrait in only a couple days. It is small, and skin is fairly quick to draw because I use the chamois and a paintbrush to cover large areas. I am calling it "Work in Progress" because I do feel that I am a work in progress. I am constantly changing, and I will not be the same person years down the road.

Monday, October 29, 2012

WIP - Self-Portrait

I have wanted to try a self-portrait for a while. It has been a long time since I have done a person, and I wonder if my drawing skills have improved since then. But I have to say it's a bit creepy drawing myself.

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.

Wednesday, October 17, 2012

Eye Tutorial Video

I hate hearing myself talk, but I wanted to make a video tutorial anyway. Here, I drew a cougar eye with the surrounding fur. It came out to 11 minutes, but there is quite a bit of explanation.


Friday, October 12, 2012

WIP - Tiger part II

I have made some progress on the tiger. The rocks were done with graphite, the rest, so far, is charcoal. I'm still not quite sure how I will do the water. I guess I better figure it out soon, because I'm running out of other areas to work on.

Tuesday, October 09, 2012

WIP - Tiger

Here is the start of my next drawing, a bengal tiger. I'm still deciding whether to put leaves on that hanging branch or leave it bare.

Tuesday, October 02, 2012

First Buds of Spring


The buck stops here... I'm not sure if that phrase really works, but I'm calling this drawing done. Mule deer start to lose their antlers early in spring (how early depends on their geographical location), so to make the situation believable, I wanted to have a blanket of snow with very early leaf buds on the tree.

Prints are available.