The figure of Zelda is finished and now I’m putting in the grass around her feet.
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Starting to fill in the grass....
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These are all the pencil colors I’m using for the grass. Prismacolor pencils.
If you’re surprised by some of these colors, like the yellow ochre and “artichoke” (greenish brown), the next pic shows how they add to the look of the grass.
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This is why I choose this particular paper color. It’s easy to make grass with some random grass-shaped pencil strokes when working on green paper.
I work on the grass in sections. I always start by putting in the highlights of the grass with cream color. I work fast, just throwing down slashes of color, moving my hand in random directions. Next I put in the other colors one by one throughout the area: two shades of mid-tone green (one cool green, the other warm and slightly darker), two shades of yellow ochre (sparingly, it’s green grass not dead grass), artichoke (greenish brown) also very sparingly, and a few jots of dark green where there are shadows, like between her feet. And last I scribble over the whole area randomly with a bright green that is the color of a healthy green lawn in sunlight….covering some of the other colors (like the cream slashes partly covered with green at the bottom center) but missing many of the others. Just scribbling around randomly, giving the section an overall color of bright green that pulls all the slashes of separate colors together. You can see all of those separate colors in this pic.
Then I start the next adjoining section with that same progression of pencil colors. I have begun by putting in the two sections of grass around Zelda’s front feet and back feet, because I have to work carefully where the blades of grass are touching or overlap Zelda’s finished feet, as you see in this close-up. Then I work quickly for the rest of the grass as I work outward from her feet and legs.
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Next I filled in the area under Zelda, connecting the two patches of grass I created around her feet. I did 3 sections to fill this area. Connecting each one as I went along. They sort of flow into one another when doing a grass lawn. It doesn’t have any discrete edges like a figure does.
Notice I made sure to include a shadowed area under Zelda, using more dark green pencil than in the brighter areas. It wouldn’t look realistic to portray the grass all the same light greens without darkening under a figure. There will also be a shadow extending forward from her front feet: the cast shadow from her head.
You can see where I lightly sketched out the oval around where Zelda is standing. I will fill that area with grass and then fade it out at the edges into the plain green paper.
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The grass finished.
This how the whole artwork looks now, the full sheet of paper, scanned.
Now you can see how Zelda’s shadow, including the shadow of her head extending forward on the grass, “ties” Zelda to the ground. Without that shadow, she would not look like she was realistically standing on the grass. Any time you portray a full-body figure, there is always a darkening of the surface they are on, beneath the body. It’s the way you connect them to the scene they are in, to make them look like they are “in” the scene, not pasted on it. If you look at Pic 1 in this album you can see how I sketched out Zelda’s shadow with green pencil. You need to plan for the shadowed area beneath a figure when you are doing the surface around them. That will dictate the darker pencil colors you choose to use there.
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A close-up of the pencil strokes that make up the grass. As you can see, it doesn’t take many pencil strokes to create grass on green paper. The paper color does a lot of the work. This is the right edge of the oval of grassy lawn, where it fades out to the plain green paper.
I explained the 10 pencil colors I used to create the grass, and how I throw down quick slashes of color in random directions to create the look of a lawn, starting with the lightest color. This pic shows how I add the darkest colors (the last ones I add) in between the lighter pencil strokes to make shadowed areas.
I portrayed Zelda very detailed, but I do the grass much looser. There is no sense spending days and days capturing every blade of grass as realistically as a dog’s coat is done in a portrait. Viewed from a few feet away, the finished grass with all these random strokes looks just like realistic grass.
🎨 Prismacolor pencil on “Light Green” Canson Mi-Teintes paper, 17 x 20 inches.
"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.
From a photo by Susan Booth.
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