The Big Surprise - Frodo

I have been secretly working on this picture of Frodo for weeks. The picture was a present for one of my friends. So I couldn't share my work on my blog as my friend often goes on line and checks out my work. But I am happy to share it now as Frodo has gone to his new home.
This was a large picture, it framed up to 20 x 24 and it has lots of detail both in the background and the foreground. I tried several new things with Frodo that I have been practicing on some of my smaller pieces. The first was the background. In order to get the soft smudging and edges on the background I rubbed it down with a soft cloth. I found this worked great but you have to do many layers as the cloth does take off a lot of the graphite each time. Another thing I tried was the colored pencils. My client wanted the scarf in the picture and he wanted that color. I have seen several demos and read a lot about colour pencil but still I was amazed at the number of different coloured pencils I used to achieve my goal. It made a very interesting challenge to the picture. Of course the hardest thing was working with a white dog. I needed to get lots of detail and still maintain the ideal of whiteness. Of course the background helped a lot but still the internal sections needed lots of fiddling so they did not become too dark or overworked. All and all it was a great challenge and I am very happy with the results.