Wednesday, February 15, 2012

Donkey: WIP

I've been working on my newest animal piece on pastelbord. As you've seen, I did this cow with charcoal and a kneaded eraser. (For you city folk, this is NOT the donkey...)


 I used vine charcoal only - which are the skinny ones on the left.



This eraser is my favorite...my progress stops completely if I can't find one of mine...it's called "kneaded" because...well, here's what Cheap Joe's says on their website:
"These erasers are great because they can last just about forever. Many beginning artists don’t understand just how great a kneaded eraser is because no one ever shows you how to use one.
But, here is a tip. These erasers are stretchy. This is great when you want to shape these erasers to fit into tight spaces or when you want to ball them up to eraser a swath a few inches wide. They are also kind of like silly putty in that you can shape them, then place them on an area that is a little too dark, press down and voila! You can instantly lighten an area and fix a compositional nightmare in an instant. But, here is the especially great part.
To clean these erasers just stretch them out, fold them over, stretch it again… and again. These erasers come out clean and brand new all over again. There aren’t too many art materials that are your friend and last practically forever."
 They're great stress relievers too. My kneaded erasers are usually pretty clean.

Since pastelbord has a rough surface, I also used a stump for the blending. The white of the drawing is the actual pastelbord surface in the cow drawing.


OK, so enough about the supplies. Let's talk about the new piece I have. It's a juvenile donkey from a reference photo I took while on vacation. I started off with a quick sketch...it's different than regular sketching since I wanted to preserve the white of the surface. It's pretty rough looking and reminiscent of a zebra.
 
 
I was mainly blocking in the values, but this eats up those charcoal sticks quickly! 

I added more texture to the fur and backgound.

  
 I played with this for a while, trying to get the right balance of background texture...I ended up using white pastel on the lightest areas.
 

I'm not ready to call it "done", but ready to set it aside for a day or two.

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