Pencil: General’s woodless graphite HB
Paper: Canson sketch universal, 5.5″ x 8.5″ 65lb
fox
Arctic Fox on Rocks
Here’s another iPad drawing. For both this and the last drawing I posted I used Tayasui Sketches, plus a little contrast adjustment after transferring it to my laptop. I’m still very busy, but I’ve managed to get this and a few drawings done that I’ll scan later.
Fleeting Moment
This was based on a photo of a snowy forest, but it was just trees. I made this entirely with an old tube of sepia (PBr7+PBk6, Holbein) and a new tube of snow white (pigment not listed, Shin Han). I got the snow white cheap a few months ago, a 50ml tube for only about $2 if I remember right. I’ve never used their paint before and I wanted to get one or two others, especially a black, but all that was left in stock was white.
Anticipation (updated)
I made some updates to this painting. The old version is below this. I added shadows along the ground to break up the main area a bit. The fox had a very faint shadow before that was too faint for the camera to really pick up so I made it stronger. I also adjusted the silhouette of the trees/bushes a little and added a second layer of them behind for depth. There’s a bit of glare in the photo, but the colors are also more accurate.
Oil on canvas, 8″ x 10″
The paints I used for this are raw umber (PBr7+PBk11, Grumbacher), magnesium ferrite (PBr11, Daniel Smith), yellow ochre pale (PY42, Winsor & Newton) and both Portland gray deep and medium (PW6,4+PBr7+PBk11, Gamblin). I’m trying to get better color accuracy in my photos but this is a little bit lighter and warmer than the real painting. Tomorrow I have a grey card coming in the mail that’ll help me get a proper white balance with my camera.
This is the digital sketch I made in Photoshop. At first I was just testing out some new brush presets and I liked how it was starting to look like a wind blown landscape.
Night Travelers
Pencil on paper, 8.5″ x 5″
I drew this last night on Strathmore recycled sketchbook paper with my very old GraphGear 500 0.3 mechanical pencil using 4H lead. The water took such a long time to shade in with such thin lead…
It’s be a very long time since I’ve really drawn with pencil on paper. I kind of like it though, so maybe I’ll do more in the next few days. I think that once I started painting years ago I kind of stopped drawing, except rarely, which really isn’t good. Drawing is an important foundation of art, and not drawing has probably held me back.
Fox Parade
Watercolor on Fabriano Artistico soft press 300lb paper, 7″ x 5″
I worked from left to right and at first I was just painting trees but once I decided to include a fox I started drawing everything in pencil before painting.
It’s been years since I’ve drawn with pencil directly on a watercolor painting before using paint. I really don’t have much practice drawing animals and I didn’t want to risk mistakes so I sketched all of them in my sketchbook before drawing them on the painting.
What started as one fox in the center then turned into an entire parade. The paint I used was Italian Dark Ochre (PY43) that I made myself with pigment from Natural Pigments. I think the scan makes the color look redder than it is.
In other news I’m finally back from a month long vacation, after another 31 hour train ride across half the US. I didn’t get nearly as many things painted as I had wanted for various reasons but this is one of the few things that I did paint. Since I was traveling I used a Da Vinci cosmotop spin #5 travel brush for the whole painting.
Fox Field
Graphite and colored pencil on cardboard 5.75″ x 4.75″
It’s not often that I actually draw something anymore. I think this is the first time I’ve used a colored pencil to draw something in many years, maybe even 13 or 14.
This blue is cobalt blue from SoHo that Jerry’s Artarama sent me for free a couple of years ago. It’s pretty nice actually, especially for their low price. Maybe I’ll order a few of them the next time I place an order. The pencil is a mix of a 12B graphite stick and a 0.3mm mechanical pencil with 4H lead.
Overall I’m really pleased with how this came out.
Night Forest
Oil on linen, 5″x7″
Painting in just black and white is a lot of fun, but thinking of a title for a painting is a little harder. Usually I wait until I’m trying to save the file so I can upload it and I think “oh, I have to name it now…” A lot of times I just name it what it is, like “waterfall” if it’s a painting of a waterfall. This time I thought I’d try something more poetic, but everything sounds so cliche and forced. Next time maybe I’ll write a title first and then paint what the words describe.
I started this painting with a mix of graphite grey (PBk10, graphite, cold dark grey) and davy’s grey deep (PBk19, slate, warm dark grey) from Williamsburg. I really liked how the mix looked, but it wasn’t dark enough, so after it dried I painted over it with German earth (natural PBk11, black earth) from Williamsburg and titanium white (PW6+PW4) from M Graham. I thinned that paint with Liquin from Winsor & Newton for most of it except the darkest parts that are pure black. Once that dried I finished by adding highlights on the trees and grass with thinned zinc white (PW4, very transparent white) from Daniel Smith.
Moonlight Fox
Oil on canvas, 5″x7″
This started as just a practice with a couple of blues and terre verte, but then I tried making something of it. I’ve been wanting to paint a scene like this for a while now. Before painting the fox I photographed the background and drew the fox in photoshop to get an idea of how best to paint it.
The red paint I made myself, and a little bit of the white.
Red Fox 2
Watercolor and gouache on Fabriano 300lb soft press paper, 5″x6″
The paints I used are Golden Barok Red from Old Holland, Graphite Gray from Daniel Smith, and Titanium White gouache from Winsor & Newton. This was my first time using the red or the grey in a painting, and my first time using any watercolor from Old Holland. I really like both of them. This may not be the best display of the red though, because I didn’t use it full strength anywhere and it’s layered over grey, but it’s a really very good paint from what I’ve seen so far.
I need to decide on a name for the fox…
Too Much White Paper 