Last year Kati Graue walked away with the title for Best Wildlife Artwork in our Degrees of Realism show. Kati’s work is absolutely amazing and you actually have to see it up close to really appreciate her skill and talent. This busy artist nevertheless agreed to share her process on her latest work with us – thank you Kati!!
“Looking at my reference material, I was immediately drawn to the authentically disarranged character of this male lion. Often lions are photographed as beautiful young robust males lacking the scars of the experienced predator; a skilled and courageous beast; a true testimony of survival skill in the wild. This is how lions should be…wild, untamed and austere with brewing “eyes of the storm”.
The intense stare and details of this beautiful wild face decided my choice of drawing surface, namely, Grafix drafting film 0.004 microns – matted on both sides. I do prefer 0.005, being a little thicker and more opaque but availability is a bit troublesome locally!
I chose A3 sizing for a full facial portrait. The double matte texture has better surface “traction” than Dura-lar (another Grafix product) and enables more layering capability.
Faber Castell Polychromos (PC) pencils with its beautiful colour range – particularly for wildlife application and translucent quality – is a personal favorite of mine for drawing the eyes. I like Caran D’ache Luminance (CDL) because they are softer, highly pigmented and provide a smoother laydown of colour as well as providing nice blending capability for Polychromos pencils. The Caran d’Ache Pablos (CDP) make burnishing a breeze and form a wonderful base layer for the Polychromos and CD luminance pencils.
My backing paper – behind the film – is a clean sheet of Hahnemühle Nostalgie 190 g/m2. This part is important because your colour choices will need to be modified as determined by the backing paper of choice. For example: the white highlights here are amplified by the paper behind the film. Should you place a yellow piece of paper, then your highlights would exhibit in tones of yellow. I chose white for “Storm”
The eyes to me are my most favourite feature to start with and many artists would agree. They add an immediate identity and motivation to render the rest of the subject being revealed.
The translucency of Polychromos provided the soft iridescent glow of the eyes which I intensified on the reverse side with dark cadmium orange and I used caput mortuum violet closer to the rim of the eyes for soft shadowing. I often use this colour or blue indigo to make the black more interesting. I don’t usually note my colour choices because I like the spontaneity of what I see in the moment.
However, because the translucent quality of PC black can fall short with intensity, by reversing the film and adding PC black around the rim of the eyes, it provided a deep black softness when viewing from the front. I intensified the black around the eyes further by layering Derwent Drawing ivory black which is truly an awesome black. This pencil is soft, waxy and highly pigmented; perfect for this application.
I wanted the fur to look “wild and brooding” like a storm brewing (hence the name) but I wasn’t sure about the approach I was going to take. I love the result and fell into this quite by accident! Here’s how:
Working in light layers – being aware that drafting film will not provide for extensive layering – and using the “flat” of the PC pencil, I applied burnt ochre as a smooth even first layer. My succeeding layers were applied very lightly using cinnamon, terracotta and burnt sienna. With each pencil layer I deepened and moulded tonal values, ensuring nice even laydown and creation of “shapes” that I “saw” in the reference image.
I highlighted the “devoid” areas with PC white and light flesh. The highlights then presented more white, yet muted when viewing on the front of the drafting film, as seen in the muzzle.
Details were then added using the Tombow eraser.
With the fantastic Tombow Mono Zero eraser – which works superbly on drafting film – I began to forge the erratically “fuzzy” shapes of the fur textures depicted. I used my eraser as my “drawing” tool making scrawling curlicues, varying pressure where I needed strong highlights and softer pressure for muted highlights.
This technique is often referred to as “subtraction” – adding and then removing colour, manipulating it for highlight or definition as desired.
Once satisfied with my highlights, I placed my dark tones using PC caput mortuum violet, dark indigo and burnt sienna. Using small circular motions for a nice blend, I finished with PC black. Here, my pencil point was not necessarily sharp unless I wanted specifically targeted details. One of my favourite colours for Storm was the PC olive greenish yellowish which provided that “dirty” look as seen in the image. The other dominant colours were PC violet and CDL Sepia 50% for shadows.
On the reverse side of the film, I applied either black, caput mortuun violet or blue indigo to deepen values and terracotta and orange flame to enrich warm colours as viewed on the front. This gives the work added depth and a “pop” of colour at random.
The superciliary (brow) whiskers were fashioned by using the tombow eraser. Same is true for the mystacial (muzzle) whiskers. I enhanced the colour on the reverse side with either PC white or Light flesh. For the black whiskers, I used CDP with a very sharp point. Being a harder pencil, this worked really well.
To mute portions of the mane, I used equivalent colours and white from the Caran D’ache range. For very fine wisps of hairs, I used the Slice tool and removed pigment from the surface. To soften some of the areas. I used a paper stump or a small water colour brush to move and feather out the edges randomly fading into the film’s natural surface.
These two tools – the Tombow Mono Zero Eraser and the Slice tool were key in creating texture and cutting down a huge expanse of time using drafting film versus hot pressed paper.
Happy with the results I needed to “get into” the nitty gritty facial details.
The “subtraction” technique was used for the facial details and again, the Tombow eraser did the magic with all the forehead and nose detail.
I “mirrored” the photo image for ease of reference when working with the drawing on the reverse side avoiding “flip flopping” and allowing correct colour placement for depth where desired. However, I would occasionally flip back to confirm that all was well on the front. I added more volume to the mane by adding deep tones breaking up the more unified look of the hair structure and continued this around the drawing as needed.
At this stage, I set aside the drawing for a couple of days to provide fresh perspective when I viewed it again.
By doing a side by side comparison using monochromatic imagery to check my tonal values, I deemed it necessary to do more.
This is a classic way to determine if your tones are correct especially using film, because of the less opaque nature of the surface. So back to the drawing board I went…
I however did not deepen tonal values as much as the photo above (left hand side) indicates, because I wanted to keep my interpretation of the mane. I strengthened only the tones complimenting the fur on his head, beneath the chin and the deepest recesses in his mane. I completed using a little more sub-traction technique and… VOILA!…he is complete!”
THE EYES OF STORM
Artist: Kati Graue
www.katigrauefineart.co.za
Photo: Mauritz Bausenhart/Unsplash
Medium: Polychromos colour pencils
Caran d’Ache Luminance
Caran d’Ache Pablos
Derwent Drawing
Tools: Faber Castell kneadable eraser
Tombow Mono Zero eraser
Slice Tool
Paper stump #1
Water colour paint brush #2
Paper: GRAFIX 0.004 double matte drafting film
Paper Backing: Hahnemuhle Nostalgie 190gsm HP white
