Mixed Media Drawing

Artist statement:

I wanted to create a black and white charcoal image of my cat who passed away a few years ago. I chose between 7 images of her and my final choice was one with a lot of contrast between colors, darks, and lights. I struggled a lot with getting the texture of her fur, and not just solid grays. Overall this was a very fun project.

To create this I used a charcoal stick and pencil in the shades black and white, various tortillons and erasers, pastel paper, and ink. I mixed some ink with water in order to make ink wash that could be used in larger areas of the paper for a base color.

I started off by printing out my image and gridding it on a seperate sheet of paper. I began shading and coloring in the top left hand corner and worked my way across going square by square. For squares that had more details with fur and such, I shaded each section of the shape with different colors and went back to it later, adding ink wash as needed. Once all of the squares were filled I went in with finer details. I used black and white charcoal sticks to make the basic shapes of the hair, and used a tortillon to fill it in. I then went over it all with black and white charcoal pencil to get finer details. for the eyes I used black india ink and a calligraphy pen to make the eyes as dark as possible. I used the pen to add darker hairs around and on the tail as well as the ears and forehead. lastly I added the whiskers. I am really proud of how this turned out and I am happy that there is another part of Brandy in my life again.