Week 14: Jean, Don & KM

 Three for Three!

Three more great submissions telling tails.

Jean

While on holiday in Greenland, it felt like chilly Melbourne winter day but in fact it was a warm spring afternoon. Surrounding Jean were heavy coated sled dogs lazing in the 'warm' sun; their thick coats making it too hot for them to do anything but sleep. 

She has used Prismacolor Premier pencils on Strathmore Toned Tan 118gsm paper to depict one of the tails of these thickly furred dogs. Jean has layered and mixed white, grey green light, cream, 50% french grey, 50% warm grey, yellow ochcre and blue indigo to achieve this lush coat. The hints of indido and yellow ochre lift the tonal hues of the drawing and she has concentrated on drawing the depth of shadows in the fur thus creating the light fur. Nice work Jean!

'Lazing Sled Dog' by Jean

Don

This week Don is also taking us on a holiday whale watching! To create this view of a humpback display he has used Derwent and Prismacolour pencils on Canson 220gsm fine tooth paper, 150mm square. 

Don has created a slightly choppy sea in various blues keeping the white of the paper to show the white caps and sparkling light reflection in the sea. The shape and rolls of the waves is very good. I think that Don could experiment a bit more with colour layering. Maybe a bit of darker green could have been added to the sea in the wave hollows creating more intensity of colour? The fluke is very flat black, Don says he felt he would have liked it in ink but as this was a pencil challenge he worked in black pencil. The fluke is well drawn in shape and again Don is careful to retain the paper white as required to show the mottled tail pattern. To avoid the flat black tone of black and increase the depth in hue of the the tail I would have used an indigo blue first, then layered deep ochre brown then black.  The sky has been created using Prussian blue, smoothed with a cotton bud then lifted with a kneadable eraser creating a good effect.

A good work Don, nice design and well observed.

'Whale fluke' by Don

KM

KM has delighted me again with her drawing this week. In fact, I got a little choked up when I saw and read her work. The poem accompanied by the drawing tell a bittersweet tale of a much loved companion. Rocky enjoys his retirement sleeping on a bed of roses.

This has been drawn in KM's visual diary, 110gsm papaer using Derwent colour pencils (yes, she tells me she mixed yellow and blue for her greens) as well as graphite pencils F, HB, 2B, and 4B for Rocky's winter coat.

Although the shape of the mat is probably true to life, I think you could have altered it - I find the L shape a bit awkard and distracting from the main image of snoozing Rocky.  His fur is built up well and has the 'feel' of the rough textured coat of the terrier breed.

I would love to see you draw this on better paper KM!

'The Tale of Rocky's Tail' by KM