Putting in Zelda's musculature. This has to be exactly precise to capture her structure…her beautifully correct structure.
By working in from the edges of her torso - topline, bottomline, and shoulder - I’m giving a place for all those shapes and values of her structure to attach. All those shapes and values that flow one into another. They have to be created separately by the artist, but together they form a single piece: Zelda’s body…none of them are separate.
FOR ARTISTS:
I put in the edges first also to capture the correct values (lightness/darkness) where the edge of Zelda’s figure meets the background color. Zelda has to stand out from the background. Her bottom-line, which is in shadow, is black (under her belly and chest) or dark browns (bottom side of her back legs): they stand out easily on the mid-tone green. But the top of her back is highlighted. Much lighter than the other values in her black coat on her torso. In the reference photo, the pale grey on the top of her back was lighter than I’ve made it. The value in the photo would have been very similar in value to this green paper, and her top-line would have disappeared into the background. There would not have been as clear a delineation between Zelda and the green background. So I darkened that value along her back. I kept it light enough that, comparatively, it will be lighter than the rest of her torso — to show the light falling along her back. But I made it just dark enough that Zelda’s topline - her beautiful, correct, show-winning topline - stands out crisply from the green.
So in addition to giving me some edges to the structure to attach the shapes of muscles and bones to correctly as I work inward, doing the edges first gives me the correct values to attach everything else to as well. The highlight along Zelda’s back is darker than the photo, now dark enough to stand out from the green, but it has to be lighter than the other values that will be adjoining it. Those edges guide me in the shapes that will attach to them….and they also guide me in the values that will attach to them.
“Zelda”
BISS TT GCHS CH Lookout Tawee v. Radiant CGC, WAC
Top Twenty contender 2018.
Commissioned by Doberman breeder Susan Ramos as a gift to Zelda’s owner Diane Tennison.
🎨 Prismacolor pencil on Canson Mi-Teintes paper, 17 x 20 inches
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