..........with the bridge of her nose. This is the fur I find hardest to get right, it's short, slightly bristly and I have no idea how to create that effect with the pencils. Oh for some proper lessons.As always when I'm having trouble I moved on and began putting down colour for the dark 'spots' in her fur. Yes, I know that yesterday I said it would be the lighter fur but somehow it just seems best to do it this way. At least I think she is now beginning to look like a leopard.
I was reading the site of cp artist Christina Langman at Big Cat Art yesterday, she has some amazing big cat portraits and a superb tutorial -parts of which I am using to get help with this piece but the tutorial uses a smooth paper so it isn't ideal - but for my next piece I think it will be invaluable. One of the big cat portraits took her 400 hours to complete!! Such patience and dedication. I should have a mantra and repeat it night and morning, "I must take my time, I must slow down", lol. And on another blog I read an old post which is also relevant for me. I easily get disheartened and think my work is rubbish and that I will never improve. This blog post said that natural talent, while useful, is NOT the most important thing - hard work, dedication, practise, practise and more practise is what counts. I'm encouraged by the thought that if I do that, I will improve. So no more self pitying, "I can't", I must go back to my Learning to Draw book and work through the exercises from the beginning again. Enough rambling, hopefully back tomorrow.
1 comment:
It's always interesting to stumble upon someone mentioning my work online. :) I'm glad you have used my tutorial (available at BigCatArt.com) and I want to encourage you to keep up the great work. It's important to realize that ALL of my works go through stages of looking very very shabby - like a kid colored them in grade 1 or something. LOL The mantra to slow down - it's not a "slow down and take your time thing" for me, it's a "must keep going until it looks better" thing. I feel that with this technique, the more time you put into it, the better it becomes, however sometimes the initial stages look so little like what you want them to that it's difficult to continue or envision how it's going to all come together. I hope that helps, and makes some sense! :) Best of luck to you in all of your artistic endeavors.
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