04. Black and White Figure Drawing

Artist Statement

For this piece, we were tasked with observing a miniature animal figure and drawing all (or part) of it only using monochrome colors. Picking an eagle figure out of the mix, I was interested in drawing the feather patterns of the bird as I felt I could get some interesting contrast with the monochrome. Using black pen ink I later within with some graphite to highlight certain areas.

In the beginning, I was originally going to draw the entire eagle figure. But as I went through the sketch process trying to figure out the form of the bird, I found myself being drawn back to its wings and talons. Such iconic characteristics of the bird, I found myself focusing this project around these singular subjects instead of the whole bird itself. Really trying to get all the detail that I could see into the drawing itself, I think they came out pretty good even if I was just looking at a plastic model.

I'm pretty happy with how this piece came out. I'm glad I decided to focus on only parts of the eagle as I feel it made a much better composition overall, and surprisingly I didn't really struggle with the limited tone choice either. But if I was to revisit this piece in the future, I feel I would do a further expedition of the eagle itself; do close up shots of the eagle or more singular views!