So, today I'm just going to be sharing a quick fox portrait I did over the weekend. Though rendering characters and scenes photo-realistically isn't usually part of my illustration style, I do think it's important to practice painting and drawing in a naturalistic fashion. I find that it helps me to better memorize the physical traits of different animals, plants, etc, which later translate much easier to more stylized works and spontaneous sketches.
I usually just like to work with ink washes for my animal portrait, but this time I played around with layering graphite pencil with ink washes back and forth to get the tones and textures I wanted.
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| Inari the Fox |
I've named her Inari, after the Japanese fox spirit. She's a red fox.
Now, here are some process images:
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| Some ink washes and graphite texturing on the face. |
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| Pretty much the finished version with a white background. (Eye highlights are done with white gouache) |
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| Played around in Photoshop to see how a sepia might look |
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| Added the background with some more washes of ink and graphite shading and smudging. Also used white gouache to add some highlights to the fur. And some more playing around with sepia toning in Photoshop, of course. |
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| My preferred version |
Original size: 4.5 x 6"
Paper: Strathmore 400 Series Mixed Media
Tools: Pelikan Black ink (17), Staedler graphite pencils, and Desinger Gouache - Permanent White (008)
Wishing everyone a great week, as always! =)
All images are ©Mariya Olshevska
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