mixed media

I was planning on doing a picture of River, but I wasn't sure which one I was going to use because I have taken so many. The picture I decided to use for this drawing was taken while I was playing with my dog and her rope toy when she suddenly decided to flip over and roll around in the grass. I used this picture because I thought the level of detail and complexity both in the background and on River would be perfect for this project.

I used pastel paper, black and white charcoal, graphite, and india ink. I started with graphite and blocked out a few sections that I wanted to avoid at first, as well as the sections I wanted to cover. An example of this would be the entire outline of River's head. The background is charcoal because I thought it would lend itself to all the detail. I used a very light wash of india ink on the entire section of River's head to be her base colour, and then I used some charcoal over that for the darker details. That made it much easier to cover the section.

As I said before, I started with the background and had the parts of the drawing that were River's head completely blocked off because this made it easier to focus on the background at first. It took me a few squares off the grid before I figured out exactly how the best way to cover the sections were using the charcoal, but once I got it figured out I went back and fixed the first few squares I had done. Once I finished that I used a light india ink wash to set the base colour of River's head. Once I had done that and it was dry, I went back over the darker/lighter parts of it with different charcoals. I also asked my friends what they thought could be changed/fixed and got some very helpful feedback which I think made the difference in how I felt about this project. I would not change anything if I were to keep working on it I think it is pretty accurate to the photo as is and I like the way it turned out.