My Drawing Process, Pt. II

Inspiration comes from unique places, and for me, I usually feel creative when looking at other art pieces. For this particular drawing, I referred to two different pieces (a photograph and an art piece, shown below).

Charcoal is my favourite medium because of its intense pigment and chaotic, wild nature – I love how it gets all over me, from my entire hands to my elbows to I’m sure even my nose. It seemed fitting to draw this piece in charcoal, especially since I was going for a dark and shadowy atmosphere.

My beginning sketch, starting with getting the wolf’s proportions right, is shown below. With using this medium, I always draw lightly first with pencil, and then go over with charcoal.

Adding fur texture and details in.

Smudging and adding layers of charcoal makes textures like fur seem more realistic. This is what I began in the images below, with darker and more detailed layers on top of the light, smudged ones.

Then I began working on the surroundings of the wolf – I was thinking at first of a smooth, flat, light grey background, but my plans changed.

Thinking the plain grey background was too boring, I tried a few different things, then decided I didn’t like where it was going.

So: I covered it in black. Good old black.

I blended in the charcoal a bit to make it more uniform, but still kept a bit of texture in the background to keep it interesting – notice how there’s tones of lighter grey in striations.

And the piece is done.

The aura around the wolf could be seen as smoke, or mist, or fog, or light. It’s really up to the viewer’s interpretation. My main goal was to let the wolf’s intense white eyes stand out, and I think I fulfilled that, so I’m satisfied. As always, there’s things I learned from drawing this. I feel that some of the wolf’s proportions and angles are slightly off, and I liked the earlier versions of the fur as opposed to the end result. Maybe I’ll try this piece again someday.

Personally, I just love drawing animals, especially wolves, and I wanted to create a darker, foggy, more mysterious piece like the image I used as a reference. Shadow Side has become the temporary, if not definite, title. I’m looking forward to learning more and continuing my artistic journey.