Assignment
In the following drawing "Two by Two" I used Arches 140# hot pressed watercolor paper. The actual drawing is 15" X 11¼" about 200% of the drawing shown below. I would like to walk you through rendering this illustration.
The media I used are India Ink and watercolor paints. With that in mind the following illustrations, which are enlarged for you to see the detail, will show the dots to be larger than on the actual drawing and the paint will be a little duller than that on the actual work. With that said let's get to work.
The first thing you should do is to draw the zebra's making sure that you do not put them into the center of the paper. In my illustration the zebra are placed toward the bottom and a little off center to the left. This allows the placement of the sun to be toward the top and off center to the right. This will hold your focus. As you look back toward the left of the picture you will be drawn right back to the heads of the zebra again.
In the exploded view of the paining you can see all the different lines I used. They include Pointillism, Scribbling and Cross-Line for the manes. For the stripes I used a 3/.80 nib to fill in the larger areas of color. Keep in mind that the lines and dots are bigger than in the original work.
Pointillism was used to convey the subtle variations I wanted in the neck, head and hindquarters. Scribbling was used in the areas of the mouths and under the bellies to create a more coarse shadow. And a 2/.60 nib as well as the 3 x 0/.25 nib was used to scumble in the grass area. These two zebra are at the Columbus, Ohio Zoo so I used our Artistic License to create my own world.
The reason I used the watercolor paper is that I wanted to use the smooth tooth of the paper to convey the color in the sun. It is nothing more than two colors mixed right on the paper cadmium red and cadmium yellow. Remember to use indelible or waterproof ink when rendering the drawing so that you do not have color bleed into the zebra image. Lightly pre-wet the area for the sun with plain water do not wet any area that you do not want the color to flow into. If you live in an area that you use a well make sure that you strain the water through a filter to get out any minerals or colorization from iron or other contaminants. If you are worried about your water you can buy deionized water from your local grocery store. After you pre-wet the sun area apply very small amount of color onto the paper or in a dish. Then just paint and move paint around until you have the color combination that you want.
If you are uncomfortable with watercolor paint for now then you can also use color pencil to accomplish the same thing. Or you can even just use your pen & ink to create the sun without any color. It's up to you. To quote a dear brother gone to be with the Lord, Bob Ross, "It's your world and you can do what you want."
Please send me photographs or e-mail copies of your work so that I can post it in the student gallery. I hope you enjoy this lesson and all the other lessons we are offering to help you to find that artist within.
To see a larger copy of the line drawing of the zebra click here. You can copy and print the zebra image if you want help to begin. You can even use tracing paper and trace the image from your monitor. First put the tracing paper over your monitor screen then trace the image lightly with a number 2 pencil.
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