Have You been to the Dark Side??

NEW WORKS FROM THE STUDIO OF ART BY WENDY

I mean the REALLY,REALLY Dark Side!

Where everything is black or shades of gray and

White is a stranger!

That's where this drawing has taken me!

Eyes of the Forest - Graphite, 20 x 16

Eyes of the Forest is a drawing of a Northern Hawk Owl that we were fortunate to see while hiking on Mount Revelstoke.  It was settled in amongst a group of firs on a branch.  As you can see from the picture below he was well camouflaged.  We would not have seen him had we not heard his call just before we arrived.

Can you find my owl??  Pretty well hidden, eh?

I really wanted to capture the way he blends into the tree.  I realized it required moving into the Dark Zone.  In drawing we have a name for it!  Bright, light pictures are High Value pictures and pictures full of dark, gray tones are Low Value.  Most pictures are in the mid-range with a more even spread of values.  Working in the Dark Zone can lead to black  mess!!  A dangerous place for an artist!

To work on my picture I put my darkest dark near the owl's head.  I did that quite early on in process so I had a point of comparison.  When I studied my picture I kept reminding myself, that's my 10, is this a 10.  (Artist talk for really dark!)  This helped me to keep most of the drawing in the mid value range and even move up to light grays with some of the moss and branches.  I really wanted to capture a shaft of light going across his chest and I picked it up with a bit of the branches around him as well.  When I was done, I was very pleased.  My owl is there but there is a really strong sense of the kind of environment we found him in.   

Eyes of the Forest will be off to Revelstoke later this month, he will be part of the Art in the Park  2014 show which will open in Revelstoke Nov. 7th.- Dec 5, 2014.  The show will then travel for a year promoting the 100th Anniversary of the Park and the Parks Program in Canada.  Pretty exciting, eh?

Capturing animals in graphite is one my passions and one of my specialties.  If you would like to commission a drawing of one of your pets Contact Me .  I would be pleased to work with you to bring your project to life.  See more of my Pet Commission Work on my Commission A Drawing Page. 

Special Note: To learn more about the Residency see my first three August 2014 Posts beginning with this One. 

Can you Draw Upside Down???

NEW WORKS FROM THE STUDIO OF ART BY WENDY

I mean work away with everything

UPSIDE DOWN!

Paper, reference photo reversed!

Necessity forced me to give it a go!!

Western Hawk Owl (We think)

My Owl is one of my projects for the Mount Revelstoke Show from my Residency this summer. I really wanted to emphasis my owl up in the tree; hence the long, thin format.  However, it was far to uncomfortable when working on the top, to lean over the whole picture so I decided to turn things around.

What a difference it made!

When you work on a drawing it is so easy to fall into a pattern of drawing 'what you think is there' rather than 'what is there'.  That old left brain, right brain thing comes into play.  The left brain sees a branch and says, yeah, that's a branch and it looks like this.  But the right brain says well no, it kind of bends here, moves there, gets lighter and darker, it seems to have a life of its own.  Unfortunately, the left brain usually win these discussions and the drawing ends up looking very boring with everything looking very nondescript.

Working upside down I found that I worked with shapes and values more, my poor left brain had no idea what I was drawing and kind of left me alone.  It made it so much easier to create tangled branches with interesting shapes and lots of volume.

I turned the picture around so you could see how things were going!

We spotted this owl when hiking on the trails on Mount Revelstoke. We were really very fortunate to see him as he totally blended into the dead branches of the tree in a very dark and shady spot. I tried several settings on my camera to get some shots and was really pleased that some of my pictures turned out.  We are not quite sure what kind of owl he is but we think he is a Western Hawk Owl.  We are just waiting for confirmation.  I should know by the time I am finished.
Note: Just confirmed it is a Northern Hawk Owl.  Oct. 6, 2014

Well I have to get my peddle to the metal and get this guy finished, he has to be ready to head off to Revelstoke by Thanksgiving Weekend!!

Capturing animals in graphite is one of my passion and one of my specialties.  If you would like to commission a drawing of one of your pets Contact Wendy .  I would be pleased to work with you to bring your project to life.  See more of my Pet Commission Work on my Commission Page.  

Special Note: To learn more about the Residency see my first three August 2014 Posts beginning with this One.