Now for day three of working on my drawing which I am calling a cougar in a tree at least for now.I left off with this drawing after just doing a rough in of the body and added the tree and branch to my drawing.
Once I am happy with the basic shape of the drawing I will start shading in the main portions of the body.I will lay a heavy layer of willow charcoal down in the areas I want to darken.
Using a blunt blending stump or a tightly rolled paper towel and working in a circular motion I blend in this layer of charcoal.This is where the drawing starts to take on texture, and depth and bring out the shadows and lighted areas of the drawing.The areas under the shoulder and in front of the shoulder I use a compressed charcoal to bring out an even darker
pattern
I repeat the process on the remainder of the body.
the same process is used to darken and enhance the shape of the branches and tree.
Once I finish darkening the drawing I spray it with a fixative spray. Now I am able to start adding in some of the finer details like the bark in the tree and branches
Once I have added the detail in I will adjust the darkness to these items again using a willow charcoal and a blending stump.
When finished with this adjustment I again spray on another layer of fixative spray.Now I can start working on the back ground following the same steps by first adding the back ground in a rough form
The process is the same I add rough details and then blend these detail until I am happy with the way they look.Since the main drawing was sprayed with the fixative if I happen to smear onto the main subject of the drawing I can erase these without changing the appearance of the main portions.
Once completed with the back ground I can go back and add the willow charcoal to areas I feel need to be darkened
I will again spray the drawing with fixative spray once I am done.
See a larger image of Moutain Lion Wonder
