Saturday, 10th February 2007

Head study of a horse

I started this piece yesterday, Friday. You will see source photograph first, then the first stage of my work in progress (WIP).

Obviously, the first step is to establish an accurate outline. For portraits it is important it is accurate, as any slight detour can make your subject look like someone else! You could try using a grid to map your drawing onto your paper, or you could trace your outline. Neither of these methods are 'cheating' - many 'great masters' employed techniques such as these -

they weretrying to earn a living - not prove something to other artists! (the art world, like many others has it's fair share of bigots!).

The equipment I am using for this piece include: paper - Canson Bristol graphic 250 gsm. This is an extra smooth paper which means your pencil will look less grainy - I prefer this as I can get really smooth results.

I am using clutch pencils - grades H, B and 2B. I may need to use darker pencils later, but generally these three give me a good range.

I also use blu-tak to lift graphite to lighten areas, like a putty rubber, only better! And I use a 'stump' - a roll of compressed cardboard/paper for blending. I tend not to blend much in my drawing, but for a smooth area like this muzzle, I have used the stump to help soften the area.

When starting a drawing, I prefer to begin in the darkest areas and work into the lighter areas.

In this case, I began with the nostril, as it is the darkest part of the muzzle. I wanted to start here and work up (it's just a feeling - I often start a drawing with the eyes!). I plan on leaving the halter until much later, drawing around it in the meantime. (click on the image above to see a larger version)

This work is already well underway - I guess I should have posted a little earlier to explain my steps! In effect, I marked out the darkest details with the pencil, then drew them in, then I tend to do a lighter general layer over the area (leaving out the brightest parts), blend it all in, then go back and add mid-tones to complete the effect. I will then find myself re-visiting areas and tweaking them as the drawing as a whole develops.

I have also used my incising tool (in fact it is a small embossing tool that you can get at craft shops) to 'etch' into the paper some of the white hairs around the edge of the horse's blaze (in the area above the nosepiece of the headcollar). This should become apparent later as I work around that area more. It helps with the stray white hairs that you find in the brown hair on the rest of his face.

Sunday 18th February 2007

In the next stage, I have begun to work on the other side of his face including the mane and his other eye. After I had done some work on the eye, it became evident that it was not lining up properly with the other eye, and made the drawing look odd. So, I studied the source photo, erased the eye out completely (by lifting the graphite with blu-tack) and drew it in again. I'm now much happier with the current position of the eye, but may need to work some darker tones in later, to try to perfect the balance. I find this is better done once you have set the tones for the entire drawing - it's easier to look at the picture as a whole, rather than fix little bits as you go, as you may find yourself constantly adjusting, and never quite getting it right!

So here to the right is the corrected version - you can see the eyes line up much better.

Working on the mane of this horse is quite tricky, as it is a dark mane on a mostly dark horse, so it has hard to not lose the detail against the background. For the most part, I start by drawing in the darkest tones. I have also used my incising tool at the ends of the hairs in places where I feel they may get lost to help me draw around them and let them notice a little more. I then use my hard pencil (H) and draw in the highlights, followed by the midtones with the B pencil. Where the background is darkest, the hair shows up lighter (partly due to the horse's colouration, as well as the nature of the hair), so I try to make these lighter.

I have now started filling in dark tones on the neck area. This is helping the rest of the head to pop forward, which also helps me

to ascertain how dark/light to go when working on unfinished areas on the head. I plan now to finish working around the neck area to establish the tone, then work back up the horse to finish the mane, then the ears. Then I will attempt the headcollar....

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Tuesday 27th February 2007

I have finally finished this drawing - you can see the completed drawing below - click on the image to see a larger version.

The next stage was to work on the ears - there was not much detail showing on the ears as they were slightly silhouetted. I drew a fair amount of detail in, but found myself softening them down with a stump and darkening them further, as they were originally too light, and looked a little odd. I then added more tone around the neck/shoulder area ready to work on the headcollar.

Once the headcollar was drawn in (again, I tried not to overwork this, as too much detail could detract from the main subject of the drawing!), my final task was to revisit the rest of the drawing to make sure that the tones all pretty much agreed with each other! I have purposefully left the muzzle area a little lighter than in the source image. I felt that darkening it too much would flatten the drawing and lose detail.

To keep it even and smooth-looking, I used my blending stump - a lot more that I would on an animal with thicker, longer fur.

As the dark neck area looked a little grainy (as seen in the above scan, I 'burnished' it with a fine layer of a sharp 2B pencil applied in tight little circles to push graphite into the fine grain of the paper that had been missed by the softer 6B I used to get the bulk of the dark area down.

I hope you enjoyed watching my work in progress - please come back soon, and I'll post another!

Rebecca x