Mixed mediums

Artist Statement:

This assignment was all about trying a few different types of mediums and learning how to incorporate them together in one piece. The photo I chose to draw was one one my dog, Katie, who unfortunately passed away in 2018. I've actually drawn this photo a few times, but never really realistically so I wanted to give it a try. This was honestly the first piece I was really motivated to do and spend lots of time working on it. In the end, i'm pretty happy with the way this piece turned out. I really liked drawing an animal for a change and I hope to draw more in my free time!

The materials I used for this piece were graphite pencils, charcoal, and ink. I first used graphite to lightly sketch the negative space just to get an idea of where things should be and to make sure things were proportional. Next I went in with ink diluted with water. I found that ink wasn't the worst material to work with, but since its permanent I was very hesitant to work with it. I mostly used the ink for a base value and for my darkest darks found in the eyes. After I put down the ink I went over it with graphite pencils to correct and match the values to my reference photo. Lastly I used black charcoal for things that weren't quite as dark as the eyes but were pretty close like the floor board, and white charcoal for the highlights. I also used charcoal powder with a paintbrush to add some texture to the fur.

This piece was a lot of experimentation with different materials and different ways of applying those materials to my piece. For example I used a paint brush to apply charcoal to give the fur some texture. The process I used to do this piece was I started with the background and worked my way to the foreground and made sure to always have an extra piece of paper under my hand to try to prevent smudging. Using ink was definitely something that was outside my normal comfort zone because once it's on your paper it doesn't come off, but I found that it was very useful to get a solid color. Charcoal is a material i've worked with a few times and it's very useful when trying to bring out your highlights, but I still prefer graphite over all three. I think that if I were to continue working in this piece I would probably work more on her back and legs just because I still feel like they look off.