The time of quick 2-5 minute gesture sketches is over. This week I embarked on a journey to capture the personality of two of my favorite animals: my small dachshund mix of many years who has provided me endless joy and love, and the local goose who has been plotting my demise for almost a year.
To begin with, it is necessary to relay the story of “Chester,” the ostracized goose at a lake near my house. I first became aware of his presence this past May on a picnic with a friend. We simply wanted to enjoy our cucumber sandwiches when we watched a flock of geese come out of the lake and head towards us. There were two or three families including goslings, and they were adorable to watch. They all kept a respectful distance…except one. There was one goose that every other member of the flock would chase away and hiss at, even when he seemed to be minding his own business. We pitied him at first, but quickly realized that the geese, apparently, knew something we didn’t. This particular bird had what could only be called a spark of madness in his eyes, and he would bob his neck in odd ways as he hopped closer to us. When I say closer, I mean this bird was devoid of all natural self-preservation instincts and was determined to not only walk up to us, but march onto our blanket and bite the food directly out of our hands. Never have I seen such audacity in a creature. We tried everything to get him to leave, including shouting, tossing pebbles, and even physically pushing him away. He proceeded to bite us and walk directly back into our midst. I know it’s not possible for birds to catch rabies, but Chester made me wonder.
When I returned to the park, I wondered if Chester would still be there. I didn’t notice him when the geese came out of the water, but then I noticed one goose in particular walked right up to me and stood still with an oddly curved neck. He still had malice in his eyes, but through some stroke of luck he stood still long enough for me to capture his weirdly looped neck. I decided to keep using graphite, since I am familiar with the medium and enjoy the texture it creates. Using scribbled arcs for the feathers made drawing those forms less intimidating and helped me capture some of the volume that was lost in the gesture drawing. I checked out the images I took of Chester in order to better understand the direction of the feathers, but overall, the motion was easy to capture from the initial gesture drawing. I changed the movement of one of his legs in order to capture a more fluid pose, but everything else generally stayed the same. The illustrative effect that resulted from relying solely on pencil strokes instead of typical blending is something I am pleased with.
Now, to speak of my other drawing, which features my dog, Pepper. I took a very similar approach with graphite on watercolor paper, as I intend to paint over these eventually. Pepper is the only animal out of all the ones I sketched who understands how to stand still when I ask, and yet she still decided to become extremely difficult to capture. I chased her around for quite a bit, but eventually decided to wait until she was taking a nap. Since she has short, black fur, the pencil stroke technique came in handy. I used them to show both the direction of the fur and the highlights that were hitting it. She has wrinkles in her skin, especially when she curls up, so I attempted to depict her rolled posture. In the original sketch, none of her feet were showing, but I decided this looked a bit confusing. So, I pulled up a similar picture of her which showed more of her leg sticking out and made sure to depict that so the overall pose would be clearer. The most fun part was drawing her huge eyes, which capture the light shining down and have a translucent effect.
Overall, I really enjoy this style of drawing. I would like to figure out how to add color in a way that enhances the overall aesthetic, and I am looking forward to drawing even more animals.
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