Masking Fluid Gone!

Now comes the details!

Seadragon

I used masking fluid to fill in the dragon after I drew it. This has allowed me to color around it, and I'll remove it later. It will leave the blank paper underneath the part that was masked.

Finished Eye

14-15 hours. A few mistakes. Good enough for the "Wild Things" exhibit? Guess we'll see

Wild?!

So, I've decided to go a different direction with my reptile eye. Afterall, it needs to be wild right? I'm pleased with how this looks so far. I'll add more green to the rest of the head and then gradually add more purple back in on some of the larger scales. I also added some yellow and orange to the eye, to give it more depth.

Progress

First layer of scales drawn in

I marked the darkest scales so I wouldn't accidently fill them in wrong. Then began filling in the green scales with 4 different shades of green/blue.

Highlights with yellow

First layer complete

Finished Eye

I think I've gotten to a point where I can move on with the scales. I always start with the eyes of an animal and I won't move on until I've got them right. I might need to come back to this and fix a few things once I have the green in around it, but I won't know that until I start. Green here I come!

More Eye!

Ok, so I've started adding the greys and blacks in this picture. I find that I have to look at the reference photo a lot since the eye is so different then what I'm used to. I can't wait to get started on the green!

I'm burnishing between every layer that I lay. This is helping me achieve the shininess that the eye needs and it's also getting rid of the pencil lines, making it look more like a pastel or acrylic work then a colored pencil piece.

This last picture shows the drawing next to the reference photo. I'm trying to intensify the colors in my piece, as well as make it bigger. These sequence pictures help me keep myself in check. I can look back and find places where I went of track, and I can see things in a new perspective when I'm not looking at it up close.

The Reptile Eye

I'm beginning my reptile eye. The first thing I did was make an outline of the black center. I paid close attention to where my highlights were, as I want to leave those white so I need to make sure that they don't get colored in.

I'm filling the eye in slowly with black. It's easy to rush this step but I've found that slowly building up the color makes for nicer results.

Another layer of black.

I used solvent to make the black smooth. Using a Q-tip I gently rubbed the solution into the cracks within the papers surface. I like using odorless paint thinner for this. I buy the kind for oil based paints and it works just fine. I use it in small amounts making sure that it doesn't seep into the paper and I use small circular strokes.

Now I added in some detail surrounding the black. The black circle gives me a good starting point to judge the position of everything else. This reptile has a lot of detail in its eye, so I'm slowly adding in all the white spots so they don't get colored over.

The brown lines look a lot lighter now that the other elements of the eye are in place! I'll have to darken them.

I've darkened the lines as well as the outside edge of the eye. This has helped me get the illusion that the eye retreating into the cavity and the iris is protruding.

This is as far as I've gotten so far. I'll be working on this piece as much as possible so it will be ready for the show. I'm kepping my fingers crossed.

Wild Things

The Anne Marie Art Garden, part of the Smithsonian Institute is having their annual "Wild Things" Art Exhibit soon. Deadline for submission is March 23, so I'm beginning to panic. I just realized that I need something more to submit!

The picture of this lizards eye is inspration for me! Doesn't it just look wild?!?!

Artists are allowed 4 submissions, so I'm thinking....Lizards, Dragons, Unicorns, and Jellyfish. It can be real animals, mythical creatures, or completely made up fantasy animals. This should be interesting!

"Better Days"

I flipped the way the car was facing, I enjoy this layout better. Also, instead of making an over complicated drawing I minimized it. I wanted the focus to be on the rusty abandoned car so I drew that with the most detail, and posterized the foreground as well as the background.

To "posterize" I basically blurred the details of the original photo and added some fun color. I wanted the sky to blend in well with the car and not overpower it, so I made it a very similar shade.

This work was entirely drawn by hand. It was a fairly fast drawing and took about 5 hours to complete. The original and prints are currently for sale on Ebay. Let me know if you're interested.

"Better Days" Photo Reference

The Fawn

I'm going to begin this blog with the project that I just finished. I have had a lot of people ask me questions, usually on Ebay, about how I draw certian things and how I get my results. So this is the place where I'll post the answers to those questions! Hopefully this will inspire you and show you how easily drawing can be if you just take it in small steps.

Materials I use: Prismacolor Colored Pencils, Bristol Board, white eraser, ruler, reference photos, colorless blender. These are the basics that I use with every drawing!

I begin each drawing with the prep of my paper. If I don't know the size I want the finished drawing to be then I'll save this step for later, but usually I do it at the beginning. For this drawing I wanted it to be 8x10, so using a piece of 8.5x11 Bristol Board, I measured margins on each size of the page. These margins are a must in my drawings! It gives me a perfect "mat" to try out colors, blend over on the edges, and just muck stuff up in general. I hate drawing to the end of the page!

The next thing I do is complete a rough sketch of what I plan to draw. This is where reference photos come in handy! The more details photos you have the better your results in the end.



This first picture was taken after I had already made my rough sketch and began to fill in. When drawing animals I always start with the eye and nose. Once I have them colored in and how I want them I move slowly away from them filling in medium tones. The eyes and nose are great markers for where other stuff belongs!

In this photo I have taken the colored portion of the head and I've added in some darks. It's very rough looking at this point but thats ok, I'm just trying to get the darker portions in the right spots.

In this picture I've gotten the darks in and now I'm adding highlights. I do this by using an eraser and removing the majority of color from the lightest areas.

For this picture, I've gone back over the face with my colorless blender, blending out the uneven areas. If I can't get it looking just perfect with the blender then I'll use my white pencil and burnish the color until I'm satisfied. I also moved up to the ear here. Pay close attention to your reference photos. At this point the fawns ear looks way too big to me, but according to the photo thats how it's supposed to be :)

Ok, in this photo I've moved onto the other ear and the neck. Be careful to put in the folds to the ear as accurate as possible. Moving onto the neck at this point was a mistake. I should have waited to do the neck when I colored in the entire body, but we'll visit that in more detail later.

With all the drawing I had done thus far, I'd lost some of my pencil detail. Before doing the body I went back and darkened up where the spots on the fawns fur was suppose to go. Those spots need to stay white!

I managed to color in the body and try to match it to the neck as best as I could. This is where my mistake became apparent to me! The neck has a small variation with the rest of the body that I can't cover up, it should have been done at one time, in one seemless sitting. Oh well, live and learn!

Now we are up to my least favorite part in drawing. The dreaded background! This is why the majority of my drawings end up with a burnished background. After spending in excess of 20 hours on the fawn at this point, the last thing I felt like doing was a complicated background, however, I knew that it was an important part to the drawing so I suffered thru it :P

In this picture I've started by putting in the greenery surrounding the fawn. I did this one piece of grass at a time, so that I could get good detail and vary the coloration.

More grass! And some twigs! Remember to add darks and lights. Despite what you might see when you glance at a picture, grass is NOT all one color. Look again closely. You'll see that it is all different shades, especially where the light is hitting it. You're drawings will look much more life-like if you keep this in mind.

Yay! almost done! I added in some grass covering parts of the deer, and I colored in the white gaps between the grass with more green. Using yellow and lightgreen (limepeel) I made some of the hightlights, and with dark green and a tad bit of black I made some of the shadows. I used my pencil blender to blend in each piece, and then I used my white pencil to color over the greenery that is in the distance. The white pencil will dull down the detail and make it look further back then the detailed pieces.

This is the finished piece! Despite the mistakes, and the 24+ hours it took, I think it turned out great.