- Scotia 6
Scotia's portrait with scratching to soften the ink I added in the previous stage. Also new: highlights in her eyes! - Scotia 7
Scotia's portrait with watercolor added to her fur & nose. Nearly finished at this point, but it needs some fine-tuning here and there, and to be a bit darker overall. - Scotia 1
This is sweet Scotty girl, Scotia. I haven't done any scratching yet, this is just the transfer onto the scratchboard. 7" x 5", from my own reference photo. - 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. - Ronin 2
More progress on the car. That "STAY AWAY" lettering took a while to get right, and I'm knocking it back with a tattoo needle. There's still a lot of "sketchy" stuff going on - just to block things in. That's the beauty of scratchboard, I can tidy all that up as I go along. There's plenty of blending work to do where the drawing shifts from positive to negative, and that section under his paws will take some time. And THEN I can start on Ronin! Since he's in front, I want to have all the underlying work done, so I can layer his fur on top - 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 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 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. - Ronin 6
On the downhill side of this 9 x 12 mountain! Obviously, I need to finish scratching his shoulder. I've intentionally over-scratched in the dark areas of his face; I'll go back in and re-ink/fine tune those parts after I get his shoulder scratched, and there are some shadowed parts of his fur that need re-inking. Even though I will color Ronin, I want the scratching to speak for itself - the color will kick it up a notch and separate him from the car - Ronin 7 - All Scratched
All scratched . . . ready for color! - Ronin 8
Now with color! Not quite done, but in the home stretch - needs a little scratching to fine tune and add back some lights, and then probably one more pass with color. This is two layers of color. I prefer to go a little lighter than I want and layer than get the color on too dark and have to scratch more than I'd like. - 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. - Ronin - Reference Photo
My reference photo of K9 Ronin - taken at an Sacramento Sheriff K9 Association event in 2014. - 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