Through His Dark Paradise...process

This is another piece for what I aim will be part of an exhibition idea I have. This is the 4th one in the theme, although they don't necessarily run in sequence. This was fairly slow work at times, but it's satisfying to see it finally come to fruition. As always I've included the various stages to illustrate its progress. It's graphite and coloured pencil on toned paper.

Master of Carrion process...

Sometimes ideas just come into your head and you've got to get them out and onto paper. This was one of those. It's graphite and white charcoal on toned paper. Nice birdies....

Horse Head study process....

I'm not entirely sure what inspired me to do a horse head study in the first place, but I'm glad I did. It was a great challenge and working on the toned paper lent itself perfectly to capturing that added sense of depth in the values, particularly when applying the layers of graphite powder. I worked from a photo of course, but added my own subtle embellishments so as not to just 'copy' it directly, which would be no fun at all.

Tattoo design process...

I was commissioned to design a tattoo recently. The bones of the brief was- a woman's face, with tentacles and flowers. Well, here you go. The original finished drawing seemed a bit stiff, and the girl looked too young, so I ended up doing another (the top one). I'm glad I did as I think the second attempt is looser and compositionally better.

Roman bust process...

I've been getting some decent direct observation practice in recently, which was continued in this study of the Roman bust. This is graphite on toned paper, with some white charcoal for the lightest areas. The light source (from the window) changed many times throughout this drawing, but I stuck closely to the initial shadow shapes all the way to the end to keep it pretty consistent and believable. For the most part.

Bird bones process...

I found these bird bones a good few months ago, but I've only just gotten round to drawing them. Bones in general fascinate me (as is evidenced from previous posts) but I was particularly interested in the delicate look of these. My support is Strathmore toned grey paper, and I begun with a light graphite sketch. This is simply the basic shape of the subject, with no emphasis on detail or tone yet. Once I've got the basic construction in place and I'm happy with the composition I'll block in the basic shadow shapes. This isn't taken to any degree of finish, just a generalised approximation of shadow placement. I did this shadow block-in using graphite powder applied with a small filbert brush. Now that the drawing is a little less flat, I build up layers of shadow/tone gradually, in multiple layers. I tend to work from the darkest values into the middle tones and only in the last layer of rendering will I add the white charcoal highlights. They're like a bonus for yourself at the end of the process that brings it all together and adds that extra bit of depth and form.

Squirrel skull process...

I found a squirrel skull on one of my walks in the park, so I decided to draw it using pencil and graphite powder on toned paper. Skulls, whether human or animal, are absolutely fascinating to me, and a big challenge. As always, I started off with a light sketch, focusing on the larger shapes, before moving onto some of the smaller ones. I had a strong single light source coming from the window, so it was easier to draw in the basic shadow shapes, before defining the whole thing with a variation of darker and thicker lines to suggest depth. I then began to block in the shadows with a small brush dipped in graphite powder. This is a pretty quick way to block in tone, and quite satisfying. It's a case of building up the layers of tone gradually, one layer after the next, and filling in details, including highlights with a white pencil or white pastel. I'm not entirely sure how long this took, but it was certainly several sittings. Fairly pleased with it overall. I'd like to get my hands on a crow skull next.