I was honored to draw the cover art for Almost Finished: A Father’s Letters to his Daughter by Justine Bowen-Jones. I loved the touching feel this picture of father and his daughter silhouetted on the beach in early evening has. I used charcoal on a medium grained paper to somewhat force myself to lose distracting detail and focus on the simple emotion this image exudes. The description of the book on Amazon.com is as follows:

While battling pancreatic cancer, James (Jim) K. Bowen, a poet and English professor, began writing letters to his young daughter, Justine. With the prospect of his probable passing, the collection of letters was intended to accompany her as she grew in adulthood, helping to answer questions and offer support at critical moments in her life. Jim passed away in 1990, when Justine was 6 years old. In Almost Finished, Justine uses these letters as the foundation for her memoir, chronicling her father’s death and the first 20 years that followed. As a consequence, the book closely models a call-and-response type narrative, with Jim’s letters creating an almost dialogue between the two as Justine explores the difficulties of losing a parent at such a young age. In a lot of ways, Almost Finished interweaves the story of their two lives, which are forever connected by the enduring and timeless love that exists between a father and his daughter.

You can learn more about the book and purchase paperback and Kindle versions by following the link below to the book’s Amazon page.  

http://www.amazon.com/Almost-Finished-Fathers-Letters-Daughter/dp/0985886153/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1365798981&sr=8-1&keywords=almost+finished

One of my drawings, Sturdevant, has been recently featured as the cover art for a lovely choral piece of music. You can see the online version and learn more about the music here: http://www.elizabethalexander.com/works/one-more-redeemer

Following the familiar theme in this drawing, I am striving to get the deepest value saturation in order to make the highlights pop. By laying a wash of charcoal and burnishing with the blackest graphite I know of, the Kimberly 9xxb, I can almost get a dark as black as charcoal that still melds with the overall look of a graphite drawing. In the first photo, here I have laid down a moderate wash of charcoal. I don’t need to be super careful, and I don’t need to worry about getting a really thick layer of charcoal. By burnishing, it would not be advantageous to have too much charcoal on the paper. I just want enough so that the charcoal particles fill the spaces and pores of the paper. Too much charcoal will result in excess powder being pushed around, and then running the risk of smudging the powder into the paper grain. Such a smudge can be nearly impossible to entirely erase so I’d rather go a little lighter than I think I need than too heavy.

With the charcoal base, I continue the same process as the last step. In addition to the burnished deep darks, many directional hatches simulating hair with varying pressure and value can create the depth and realism I want to achieve. I study the stock photo carefully to recreate the look of realistic veins and muscle form, paying very close attention to how the light and reflected light plays upon the structures.

This drawing is one of the more involved drawings I have completed recently and represents nearly 15 hours of actual drawing time. Patience is key with a drawing as intricate as this one if you intend to achieve a realistic final product.

The glossy sheen the hair on the neck creates a neat rippling effect. It’s a beautiful, clean, and wonderfully natural look. However, this look is very difficult to give justice using graphite as a medium. I must get enough contrast to make the off-white of the paper look like reflected sun. I need a little help from charcoal to get my darks as black as I can in order to get the lights to sparkle. Here I rely on my method of burnishing a layer of charcoal with a Kimberly 9xxb. It’s not a true black, but it is the best saturation method I’ve uncovered that still melds well with an otherwise graphite drawing. I need the mane and the shadows under the jowl to have this level of saturation. The hairs of the mane are effectively rendered by allowing a little fuzziness one the top edge. I simply allow my brush to carry a little powder over onto the white background. If I wanted a sharp edge, like that under the neck, I’d come back with a kneaded eraser and clean it up, but for the mane, fuzzy edge is what I’m after.

To get the look of the rippling, sun kissed neck, I begin with harder grades of graphite, and using directional hatching, build shadows. By progressing to softer and softer pencils, I can achieve the depth I’m after. In between layers, I lightly run the brush over the area to smooth and harmonize  the marks. I also rely on the kneaded eraser to pickup wayward graphite particles. The protruding veins are rendered similarly.     

I also spend some time completing the leather strapping and metal bit. Unlike the hair, I want no trace of pencil marks on these areas so I work in tight circles, and blend vigorously with the brush.

Continuing the shading process down the muzzle, I also work on the leather straps of the bridle and the beginnings of the upper neck . Leather, especially shiny, yet worn leather, requires some intricate work to pull off the look. You tend to think of minor elements of a drawing are more or less one value, but losing the realism of this one element would hit your eye wrong and distract from the rest of the composition, no matter how masterful the focal point is drawn. Therefore, I’m careful to detail the stitching and adjustment holes.  There is a great deal of value change from the lights to shadows. Additionally, the metal of the clasps must come off as bright, yet there are shadows that must be put in as well.  A steady hand and a harder grade of lead is necessary along with careful use of a kneaded eraser. The shadows cast by the bridle are as deep in value as I can muster. Because they are generally narrow bands of dark, I am  mindful not to push my luck with charcoal underlayment. There is too great a risk of charcoal powder contaminating surrounding paper, so I spend some time with the Kimberly 9xxb pencil with a fine point, working, and reworking areas until they are fully saturated. The 9xxb is soft so the edge is quickly lost. A good sharpener is a must.

The jowl and muzzle are rife with detailed skeleton-musculature features as well as fine veination. Such structures juxtapose shadows with highlights. It takes some time to sculpt the illusion of depth and yet incorporate directional hatches to suggest hair. The shadows on the jowl, muzzle, and nose are wide enough to allow the use of charcoal burnished with the 9xxb pencil. I am careful, however to allow slight reflected light to just illuminate the outer edge of the muzzle and nose. Since I generally stick to using a small brush to blend my graphite, I can’t be super precise in blending, so I use the brush in conjunction with a kneaded eraser. Blending, erasing, and back to blending until I’m satisfied. While I began the shading of the neck, I just put down  a base coat from which to work. I’ll return to this area to sculpt the shades into the illusion of depth.

Here I continue down the muzzle, again reaching for very deep darks for the necessary contrast this drawing demands. The whitest I can get is the white of the paper so those blacks need to be fully saturated. Again I utilize the Kimberly 9xxb to burnish over a wash of charcoal. This horse’s white star is in shadow, but still needs to look bright. I also can’t just leave the area blank. There has to be definition and detail while retaining as much brightness as possible. I make vary light strokes with a 2h lead pencil and lightly brush the strokes into shadows and lift highlights with a kneaded eraser. As the darker hair moves from shadow into light, I make hatching marks in the direction of the hair growth. While I am not looking to draw every hair, direction of lines allows ones eye to fill in the suggested individual hairs. I also brush the graphite in the same direction as the marks to avoid any potential banding that would interfere with the illusion. Additionally, I must begin the process of sculpting musculature and veins. On an animal with this type of hair, the veins present quite a challenge. Making this look natural comes only with practice.

While I define the muzzle I also work in the eye and continue to develop the straps of the bridle. While the eyes of animals do not seem to have quite the individualistic characteristics as human eyes, I still have to capture the essence of the individual. Since horses have much less whites in their eyes than humans, and in this angle none is showing, it becomes less about getting every detail of the iris just right, and more about getting the reflections look wet and shiny. Many people think wet highlights are pure white, but they are usually not. They are simply the reflected light of their surroundings. This drawing is only 8×10 so I must simplify the reflection into base shapes and focus on getting the look right with subtle shades. Since the surrounding  eye has a lot of graphite, I can just use the brush to bring in a little shade on the refection shape. This allows the transition from the eye into the refection to look seamless.  From this point, I’ll continue to work on the muzzle and jowl, sculpting the contours to get depth in the drawing.

Since I am right handed, I generally begin shading a picture from the upper left of a drawing and work my way down and to the right. Often I need to rework areas, but I try to limit how much my hands will come into contact with shaded areas. Even with a paper shield, smudging becomes a distinct possibility. Usually some smudging is inevitable, and it usually is easily fixable, but less smudging means less time consuming work. Some artists will add layers to a drawing; sketching the whole picture, and then adding layers of graphite, reworking, and refining with each layer until they are satisfied with their work. I’ve tried to use this technique and it is probably less time consuming compared to my way of working in the long run, but I find I prefer to more or less complete one area before moving onto another.

In this case, the drawing is going to be bold and high contrast. I need to get really deep values that I just can’t get with graphite alone. Even the Kimberly 9xxB, as smooth and dark as it is will not allow me to achieve the darks I need, so I underlay dark areas with charcoal. Here I am just using a 4b compressed charcoal pencil to wash under the darkest values. I don’t need to completely saturate the paper with charcoal, a light wash is all I really need to get the values I’m looking for. Over that I use the Kimberly 9xxB pencil. The result is a look that blends into an otherwise graphite drawing with a much darker value. This is called burnishing and it allows me to seamlessly incorporate charcoal into a graphite drawing with the help of a small taklon brush I use to blend most of my drawings. The second picture here shows how I add the charcoal before burnishing.

Every time I receive a commission, it inevitably comes with a back story. Most often, someone will have a portrait commissioned to commemorate a special occasion. Whether that be a new addition to a family, a memorable moment capturing the essence of a childhood, or a wedding, an anniversary, or a posthumous memorial. They are important memories that clients wish to immortalize. And sometimes I get commissions to draw the furrier members of families. Pets are considered by many to be members of their family, and sometimes, pets shape who we are, and who we become. Recently I received such an assignment, of a now elderly horse.

According to my client, Unknown Legend is credited with turning her surly, rebellious, purple haired, fourteen year old daughter into “an amazing woman… beautiful, brilliant, and lovely inside and out.” Bought as a three year old thoroughbred, this teenager trained this horse in dressage, entered the show circuit and set a course for a successful equestrian career.

I often have to work from less than ideal reference pictures, but for this commission the client sent me several photos from various angles, which has given me ample high quality material to use. I have worked out the line drawing on newsprint and transferred the image onto Arches natural white hotpress watercolor paper. Hotpress watercolor papers have become my surface of choice, largely replacing Stonehenge, because of the increased workability. Stonehenge is lovely, buttery, and accepts light and midrange values of graphite beautifully. However, it tends to fray fibers if you try to blend too much, or try erasing with any pressure. It also does not take deep values as well as I’d like. It still has uses, but I now usually turn to hotpress watercolor paper. Of course watercolor paper has it’s own drawbacks as well. You have to be careful when blending or the sizing will infuriate you. Since I now largely brush blend my graphite this is not so much a problem for me.

Materials:

I will be using Arches Natural White Hotpress Watercolor Paper, Staedtler Mars Lumograph or Kimberly pencils in grades 2h, h, b, 2b, 3b, and 4b. I’ll also use Kimberly 9xxb, and charcoals in various grades, and a small angled taklon brush for blending, and matte fixative.

I’ve been somewhat distracted lately and allowed this painting to be put on my back burner while I worked on other projects. However, I focused some attention on the canvas this morning and finally finished. I could add a few more glazes to get a more refined and realistic painting, but I prefer to leave enough roughness to most of my paintings so they look like paintings, and not photographs.

In this final step, I again gave the painting a light coat of liquin to make the surface nice and slippery allowing the paint to slide smoothly. I then began shaping some feathers. I had a rather light under painting completed which forced me to work a little harder to build the lights. I had to add shadows that I could have avoided had I started a little darker. However, it does allow a little easier transition blending. Once I had the feathers in a pleasing placement, I added a few stark highlights and grazed a blender brush over them to soften the effect, and melding the picture into a cohesive whole.

I also focused attention on the head, particularly the eye and comb. The eye required some pretty intricate blending and I shake a little more than I’d like, so using a number 2 round, and steadying myself as best I could, I lightened the areas from the shadows to get the illusion of roundness, as well as adding the highlight. Again with the no. 2 round, I developed the shadows and highlighted areas on the comb. The comb is a rather bumpy, fleshy appendage, but I wasn’t looking to get every bump and dip. I simply mottled the pinks to give some semblance of depth.  I did very little to the beak, and chose not to refine the legs and feet more. As I did not wish to draw too much focus down.

When applying glazes, I usually wait for the underlying paint to be more or less dry. I often use liquin as a medium which hastens drying time a little bit, but it does generally take a few days to get to the point where I am comfortable in applying a thin even coat of liquin over the area I’ll be glazing without it smudging the base coats. As you can see from the photo, the shiny areas are from a wash of liquin. I want just enough of a coat that it eases the application of the glaze.

I’ve continued to shape the legs and rock. I’ve also focused on suggesting feather shapes on the chest. This portion might better be described as “mudding” rather than glazing because I am using some opaque titanium white to highlight the feather shapes. I’m also going with some transparent colors to deepen some contrast in this area as well, so it is a combination of the techniques. I’m also getting some more vibrant colors on the black tail feathers to suggest the iridescence. I’m using a variety of blues and greens including cerulean, ultramarine, cobalt and some cadmium yellow (to get the greens) as well as a little of the same color mixture of the body to define the ends of the feathers. There might be a little purple in there too. The flight feathers have also been defined, but I have yet to move onto the secondary feathers. The next time I glaze I’ll finish glazing the rest of the body, wings, neck and head. From there I’ll decide if I want to add any additional glazes, or if I am happy with the level of detail.