A Remembrance on Memorial Day

This is just the most beautiful song from Dire Straits entitled "Brothers in Arms".    God bless the service men and women on this Memorial Day who have served, are serving, and will serve this wonderful country of ours...For those that have come home and those that we will forever hold in our memories and hearts. 

Baby Turtle 4

As you can see, I have started the baby turtle.  The fingers are all blended,  and they were made darker to balance my values and not have such a "washed out" appearance.  (The hand in the photo reference has a medium tan color.)  The darkest shadows may get a little deeper before this one is finished.  The little body of the turtle takes quite some time to render.  I am taking it slowly.  My hopes were to be close to completing this one over the long weekend.  Unfortunately, I woke up Friday with a pulled muscle in my back.  Grrrrr!   This is the first time that my back has made it torture to sit at the drawing table.  Even though the change is slight, I am happy with the darkening of the hand and the start to the turtle.  I do not believe that I have ever reworked an object more than this hand.  It makes me think that I should have began with the turtle.  The darkness of the turtle is what sets the tone for the rest of the drawing.  Lesson learned!

Baby Turtle 3

As the fourth finger enters the drawing, the viewer can begin to see how small this little turtle really is.  This drawing shows my love of photography when using the macro setting.  By using this setting, the photographer captured the true scale of this baby turtle and conveyed it in a masterful way. 

I am still working on the area above the turtle and will have to do some pushing of the darks.  My method is to build value and blend... take away value... build value and blend... take away value... repeat as many times as necessary. ;)  There is sand on one finger, the thumb, and the turtle.  It will be a challenge on how to convey the grains without being to blotchy.  The grains show up well enough on the photo but hard to render due to the minute size.  I can tell you this... I am getting tired of working on areas that are out-of-focus!  

Baby Turtle 2

Does it look like I am gaining ground yet? ;)  I have been working for a few hours here and there over the last three days.  I started very lightly, which always happens at the beginning of a drawing.  With this being the background, my layers were not as aggressive as they would be if the central focus was drawn in already.  So I find myself searching for the degrees of depth in my shadows.  If it looks a little choppy, it is because I am adding another layer of shadows.  They will have to be blended in the next step.  I think this will be dark enough to move on to another area.  This last layer of mapping makes the fingers look more sharper in detail.   When I blend, they will look more out of focus and will recede into the background and allow the turtle to pop forward.   Well... got to head back to the drawing board while there is still a few hours left to work.  :)