- Another View of the Bottles in a Window
- Jacob 1
5" x 5" scratchboard drawing of Jacob the Chimp. The back story: a call went out to members of the Society of Animal Artists to create art of Chimp Haven chimps, with the artists granting permission for image use on merchandise to benefit the chimps. Reference photo courtesy Chimp Haven. - Ronin 7 - All Scratched
All scratched . . . ready for color! - "Safety" 1
Here's the first, sloppy stage of "Safety", 7" x 5" The reference photo has a lot of light values in it, so I used Claybord (white scratchboard) for the drawing - that way, I didn't have to remove a lot of black. using artistic license I chose to make the upper and lower left sections dark instead of showing the dog's body. The shape wrapping around her head is an arm in a fleece sweatshirt. At this stage, I blocked in the values by painting with full strength India ink & ink washes. It looks really rough here, but all this became detailed with scratching as I worked through the process. I used a Rapidograph (technical pen) filled with India ink to draw the eyes and to scribble the stripes of her brindle pattern. At this point I had just started "texturizing" the solid black areas by scratching. Here's an Instagram video showing stippling on a portion of the background: www.instagram.com/p/BH4aLolBaqP - Cable on Machinery
The cable is made up of lots of smaller cables - impressive. - Ronin 5
The car is done, with a few tweaks to be made in the final stages of the drawing, after Ronin is finished. I'm happy with the progress on Ronin so far. - Hanna 2
Watercolor on the railing: I've scratched & added color twice. I'm still building the contours & wood grain, but I like how it's going. I'll add some color pencil to define the grain further. Just scratching so far on Hanna. Clearly, I'm not worried about drawing the eyes first. Every drawing is different, the eyes happen when they happen... - Hanna 5
All scratched, ready for color on Hanna. After looking at the railing for plenty of days, I'm happy with it, no further changes needed there. - Ronin 1
Very early stages of this drawing . . . Ronin will be the easy part, that's why I started working on the car first. I wanted to figure that out before I started on Ronin. I'm going for a sketchy, "blueprint" effect for the line work that's outside of the full-render zone, with a transition between. Ronin will be in color, everything else will be black, white or grey. - Detail of Ronin 4
Here's a close-up of one section (from the "Ronin 4" photo), so you can see the different textures that go into it. On the right section, in the middle, is the first layer of scratching. Around that is a layer of stippling that goes on top of the scratching. I need to finish stippling that center area. On the left, I've done all the stippling and then knocked it back back with light scratching. Now that area needs a little more stippling to fill in gaps and then more scratching to blend it. - Ronin 4
The car is done, other than that part under Ronin's feet. The left side of it needs a little more blending, the right side needs more stippling and then blending. - Ronin 3
Starting to scratch Ronin now. There are some areas of the car that still need work: the moulding at the top of the door, the window frame on the right, and that entire part under his feet, but the rest is done. I knocked back the linework in the negative space areas with a warm grey Pitt marker. It was too contrast-y before, I like it better now. - Ronin 9 - Final
Finished! Minor changes from the last version. There's a little bit more drawing on either side with this scan. I had been scanning with it flat on the scanner, but there's a lip that was cutting off a little from each side. This time I scanned in 2 parts so I could get every last bit of the drawing. "K9 Ronin", 9" x 12" scratchboard, colored with ink. - Deputy Gregory & Me
Deputy Gregory and me, with a print of the Ronin drawing. Deputy Gregory was Ronin's former handler. I took the reference photo for the drawing when he and Ronin were at a fund-raising event and wanted him to have a print of the drawing. - Ronin & Me