moonvoice | [Art] Black Wolf and Pines

- On hold -
27.5 x 39 centimetres (11 x 15 inches) on
cold-pressed illustrator's board
waterfast, archival fineliner, pencil, watercolour pencil, acrylic, gouache

No prints will be made available (or if there are, they will be very small versions), because I cannot get a high enough resolution picture of the final. Apologies.

Final - The final is taken with a flash, but because of the strength and layers of colour in some areas, there's reflective / whiting out happening on the eye and such. Scroll down to th end to see the final with no flash, for a more accurate reflection on the blacks. I am super happy with this.

Original Sketch

WIP 01 - Linework of the wolf and energy lines in the piece.

WIP 02 - More delicate linework of the pinecones in the right-hand side of the piece, beginning of the landscape.

WIP 03 - Completion of the trees and basic linework in the landscape, blacking out of the darker lines in the piece.

WIP 04 - As you can see in this one, I've started fleshing out one of the pinecones on the bottom right. The fur has been done, and I've worked a little bit more on the landscape.

WIP 05 - There probably should've been another WIP picture here, but meh. More detail is added to the energy lines. Outlines are given to all the pinecones, and dots are used to create more depth and shading in the pinecones themselves. Spirals with a 0.1 fineliner are used in the background behind the trees, and pinecones. The rocks get some cross-hatching to add texture, and dots with a 0.5 fineliner are used underneath the trees themselves to create a greater illusion of density. And then of course there's texture in some of the pine trees themselves. This baby is ready for colouring now. :)

WIP 06 - Here you can see the very beginning of the application of watercolour pencils. Watercolour pencils are tricky, because how they look being applied (i.e. the lighter colours near the wolf's muzzle) are very different to how they look once you've added water (i.e. the more saturated colours everywhere else). Those colours near the wolf's muzzle are identical to the ones that have already had water applied. So using watercolour pencils is like its own alchemy, making them an awesome medium.

WIP 07 - Here I've applied the watercolour pencils to the rocks, a small section of sky, and all the grasses. I've also applied a thin layer of wash / pencils to the water.

WIP 08 - Wolf goes gothic! Here I've started applying the shadows to the wolf. The background spirals and the pinecones have been coloured. I've blocked in (but not watered in) watercolour pencils into the rest of the sky.

WIP 09 - I've darkened the water again, and blocked in the wolf's coat. This is the first layer of colour. It's predominantly greys, blues, greens and browns with almost no black.

WIP - 10 - The rest of the sky is watered in, and the trees are started. A lighter wash goes here, and then later darker greens will be added in regular pencil, which creates a greater sense of texture. The trees get a deliberately messy 'wash' with the brushes, again for texture. The pine needles around the pinecones have also been painted in.

WIP - 11 - Added a layer of colours to the wolf's fur, making it more opaque, and started adding shades to the pine trees out the back.

WIP - 12 - Finished pine trees. I'm sure I did something else at this point. Lol.

WIP - 13 - Metallic olive paint is added to the trees,

FINAL - NO FLASH - Added an extra layer of black aroudn the pine-trees, changed some of the colour shades in the energy lines, which works better for the energy I'm evoking. Added silver dots to the rocks, and to the border between the pinecones and the rest of the image. Added areas of cream to the border around the pinecones. Cream highlights to the water, and additional work on the water to increase the shading (about four layers of colour, smudged in with a tissue, to create a shiny effect in certain lights)