Tuesday 24 November 2009

Curlew drawing-starting to develope background

Significant progress has now been made on the background to this piece over the last couple of sessions.The mudflat behind the bird is now complete,hopefully showing the strong sunlight and its cast shadows up nicely.ive had to go to quite soft grades to get the level of darkness i required,layering from H grade through to 3B in some spots.the small section of visible water at the base of the mud is also now complete.i'm now about to tackle the nearer mudflat that the curlew is standing upon,this will be well lit with strong sun and (if all goes to plan)some lovely dark shadows from stones and bird.My plan is to have some lovely cast shadows upon the bird as well which i hope will tie it all together and create the atmosphere within the piece.At this time ive just completed the second layer of graphite on the foreground having layered once with an H grade pencil and followed this by a layer of HB,these are the building blocks of the foreground,my next step is to start introducing some details.

2 comments:

Robert St-John Smith said...

how are you avoiding getting finger grease on your paper ?

Unknown said...

hi chance and welcome to the blog! When i draw i keep a piece of cheap cartridge paper under my drawing hand between it and my drawing,changing it for a fresh piece every so often as it gets dirty so that it doesnt deposit graphite on the image.some artists prefer to use a transparent drafting film to do the same job.
regards