Lynx In The Woods

[fengarm]

This is an Estonian poet, songwriter, writer, journalist, artist and musician Aapo Ilves. His last name means lynx in translation so this is where the theme comes from.

Graphite and charcoal on A4 paper.

Questions and criticism are welcomed...



Here's a close-up too that shows most of the textures:

[luicre]

Good work, Fen!. It certainly depicts a real character.

Saludos

Luicre

[Hoofnpaw]

Excellent work and very creative depiction!

Sean

[cashin1]

Very nice fengarm, so much detail. Thanks for sharing!

[electricajun]

Great work ... thanks for the detail view.

[ArtsyBren]

This is lovely work! That hair and beard are especially well done!

[tonian]

Wow, great textures!

[fengarm]

Thanks to all for the nice words...

I'd like to say some words about this drawing myself too, maybe someone finds it useful. I already said who the person is so I won't stop on that, google and youtube will help you..

First about the reference. I never draw behind a computer so I use printed references. Unfortunately my printer is a disaster so in most cases I have to invent some contrasts, details, textures etc, this was no exception. Having said that I have to admit that this is not an excact copy of the charachter. His eyes aren't as good as I wanted them to be but I'm still quite happy with them.

I always start portraits with the eyes because when eyes aren't right then the whole artwork isn't worth anything. I found it interesting to draw these eyes because the glasses are toned. Getting the values right was really hard but once accomplished I felt good enough.

Having done the eyes and glasses I moved on to skin and hair. I always use circulism on skin when doing realistic works, but I have my own twists to it. Pure circulism doesn't feel good for me, I almost never complete the circles and sometimes I add spots, dots and very tiny straight lines in random directions.

I used negative drawing for facial hair and mostly for hair too. I think the hair looks good from the roots to the middle parts, but tips are screwed. This is the place where I need help: can anyone tell me the best way of how to draw hairtips, more exactly said the parts of hair where they cover a darker area, in this case his coat. I hoped that someone will notice how bad these areas look, but it seems not. Now you know where to look, help me please! For your information on our-left-side I used a lot of kneadable eraser and on our-right-side of the hair there is mostly negative drawing. None of these look very good.

What about the layers? There are no planned layers at all, I put tones down as I move along, I can't work with large areas at one time like some people do. I think that realistic drawing can be done in two ways- one is layering and the other is building things up piece by piece like a puzzle. A good example for the first kind of artists is our very own talented kennychaffin, for the other kind I'd like to highlight Armin Mersmann.

I like to add some details of my own into most of my works done from references. On this one clothing and background are made with no reference and the ear is taken from a photo of a real lynx.

For the deep blacks I used charcoal and I always overdraw it with graphite. This way the whole drawing has its familiar graphite shine but doesn't lack darks at the same time. Pure charcoal without graphite overlay doesn't shine so the drawing looks fragmented and unnatural from some angles and i really don't like it.

Some might think about blending too. I don't like to blend graphite if possible but for some textures it is a good technigue. I used blending stumps on the background and scarf for this piece. Circular motions work good with blending stumps and for large areas a piece of chamois leather works the best.

Ask anything if you want to. I prefer to answer the questions about the drawing though : )

[tonian]

First: sometimes you don't need to draw every detail; our brain is trained to fill in missing links.

Then, to answer your question about how to draw light hairs on a dark area: have you heard about indenting? Take a blunt needle (I have two embroidery needles in my pencil set exactly for this purpose), or a ballpoint pen that doesn't write anymore, and firmly draw the line that you want to keep white (or any colour/tone that the paper has at that point). You then can go over that line with a not-extremely-sharp pencil and the line becomes visible.

Does this answer your question on how to draw hair tips?

Greetings,
Tonia

[fengarm]

I've heard about the technique and even used it on this drawing too for some hairs between the ear and the glasses. Yet I doubt it would work effectively for a big bunch of hairs. Anyway I'll test it on a sketch tomorrow, maybe it really solves the problem. I'll let you know.

[RickDArt]

I don't know if I see the problems you're pointing out on the hair tips...it fits the rest of the picture and doesn't stand out as if anything is wrong.

I don't have much to offer, but: If you look at my "Introduction" thread, there's a drawing of my son that has white fuzz against an almost black background. I used the same negative drawing technique that you do, and it was BY FAR the most time consuming part of the piece. The only way I was able to achieve it was by taking my time and was as patient as I could possibly be.

Possibly could be just taking more time on the area? How long would you say you spent?

~Rick

[ShinyShimmy]

This is fantastic! I love it!!!!! I feel you on the crappy printer - I have one of those, so I do draw with my computer next to me to get the details. Problem with that is that I tend to procrastinate on the net when Im meant to be drawing!