Hamster Drawing

Here is the next drawing up on the board. I hope you can see  the composition. I put it on pretty light. I am trying to keep erasing to a minimum! Although Bristol seems to be relatively easy to erase on, I am afraid that I might create rough spots. Better safe than sorry! Like the others, I did the initial drawing on tracing paper with a graph underneath it. Then, I transferred it to smooth Bristol. I am planning on using mainly a 2b pencil and plenty of stumps. My sand paper has been getting a workout to roughen them up. I haven't done to much erasing, but what has been done is with a kneaded eraser. The photo reference is pretty dark. If I leave the composition unchanged, I might be going into some softer pencils for my darks.

Enough talk about the materials! My composition is a picture I took of my son holding onto his pet hamster. I took several photos of his two hamsters that he owns. One is a long haired hamster called Danimal and the other is a teddy bear named Gord. I would have bet money that I would have done a drawing of Gord first, since I have a fondness for his variety. That added to the fact that Danimal is a long hair who constantly looks as if he has had a very bad hair day! But when the photos were reviewed "Handsome Dani", as he is now known, stole the show! So one of the favorites was my son holding him in his hands. There was Danimal's little hand lightly sitting on my son's hand, his head turned to the side down slightly, and one eye looking endearingly at the camera. Who could ask for more? All I had to do was crop slightly. Oddly enough, he had a few in his session that turned out brilliantly. Who knew he possessed that kind of love for the camera? Certainly not me... ;)

I have started on one of the hands. Human hands (and a close up at that), are not my favorite thing to do. It seems to be coming along. I hope the other one doesn't give me any surprises. I am keeping the values pretty light and doing a lot of blending. If needed, I will go back later and darken some areas. It will depend mainly on what I do to the background.