I have a goal for this year of completing one drawing each month. Well, I just finished my January drawing. My February drawing is already in progress from December so I am on track. If you’ve read my blog at all, you know I mostly draw dogs and I definitely have some dogs on my list. I also have plans to do an endangered species series. The ultimate goal of both series is to raise awareness for things and also to create some images I can sell prints of in between taking commissions.
So to create this endangered species series I need photos obviously. I have accumulated some good ones from Pixabay that are free for all use. My first drawing of the series was from my own photo, my wolf. This next one is a grizzly bear. I struggled with this drawing in ways I don’t really want to explain. Long story short, the fur was wet in the reference photo and I could not mimic that, so I just did my own thing and it didn’t work out so great in all the areas. I had to erase and erasing colored pencils is never a good plan. The paper got damaged and the color wouldn’t stick. I managed to fix his body, mostly, but the ears I couldn’t fix. I purchased some crayons to cover the damage. They were wax based and water-soluble. They covered the damage, but had their own issues. So, without further ado, here is the progression and the final result.
I colored the background black at the end with my black crayon. The background portion looks better here than in real life because it looks a little more solid. If you look at the progression of the lower right fur, you can see I changed it three times. The first time I mostly liked it, but the fluffy part around his face looked too stiff and in effort to fix the fluffy part, I ruined the lower portion. Despite my struggles, I am mostly happy with the final result. I think it will be a good piece to pave the way for my future pieces. I am really happy with his face. It has a lot of texture which is something I’ve been aiming to get better at recently.
Annie's Art Blog 