Baby Turtle Cont.

As you can see by the date,  I took a little hiatus from drawing.  It does feel good to be back at the drawing board again... refreshed! :)  The fingers in the drawing are starting to be mapped in.  They will be out-of-focus for the most part.  The hand is pretty tan, so once the blending starts, I will be deepening the shadows and skin tone more.   It was tempting to start on the crisp clean lines of the turtle first, but I decided to try a left to right approach.  Part of this decision was due to it being such a pain in the last drawing to put the background around the already drawnYorkie.  Also, I wanted to make sure that I could get the right amount of blur in the fingers first.  My mind has a terrible habit of directing my hands to draw out-of-focus objects in focus.  This little talent comes in handy when working with a bad photo, but not so good :( when I am working on a blurry background.  I will complete the work over the top of the turtle before adding him in.  He has little bits of sand on his body that should make for a tedious challenge, and I do not want to risk smudging him. ;) 

Happy Easter!

Warmest Wishes for a Wonderful Easter!

Baby Turtle Drawing

Sometimes the most time consuming part of a drawing is deciding what to draw.  Oh wait... I did have it picked out.  Unfortunately, this artist loves to change her mind!  There I sat over the weekend with my original choice of photo reference.   Then, four others managed to find a way into the running.  (One even had fur!)  And the truly scary thing... the pile of references were threatening to grow some more.  If not for the depletion of all of my photo paper, this little guy would probably not be being posted.  But alas... even with the promise from Amazon that photo paper was on the way,  I made my choice and here is the line drawing.

This drawing is a macro shot of a baby turtle that is being held up to the camera.  It is a spectacular photo reference, and I was thrilled at the sight of it.  There is not much to the line drawing, since most of the hand is out of focus.   I just set up some reference points for the fingers, and the harder lines to the turtle.  This drawing will be 7 1/4 x 10 3/4 inches.  I will be using my faithful 2b mechanical and 9b wood case pencils, lots of blending stumps, and kneaded eraser.  It will be interesting to see how this piece comes out, since so little of it is in focus.   But I think, it will make for an interesting way to showcase this little guy. :)

Yorkshire Terrier Finished

I am proud to announce that this little girl is finished.  My poor 9b pencil is half the size that it started out as.  It kept shrinking layer after layer. ;)  The real payoff was when the tape came off.  I love the crisp lines.  This was the first time that I have had a black background.  I found it to be very messy.  The drafting tape is priceless in keeping the edge sharp and providing a white area around the drawing.  When cleaning up the white border beyond the tape, I picked up the wrong eraser and created a smudge. :(   Although it lightened up considerably, the tape has made enough of a border to mat around the drawing.  *whew* 

I will leave this little girl on the board for a few days before considering her finished.  My next pic is ready to be put into a line drawing, and there will not be any fur on this one! ;)  Just taking a little break to practice some hands again.