The Unusual Deer Skull - in Oil Pastels

Another way to get some nice contrast colour is by drawing very boldly over coloured paper - this was pretty good, but why couldn't I just settle for letting the antlers go off the page a bit? They look all warped and cartoonish.

The Unusual Deer Skull - the Antlers in Coloured Pencil

Here's a more true to life depiction of the antlers in coloured pencil. I'm quite pleased with it, but on a scale - going from the bottom to the top, the less I like it. I did some great 'veiny' detail at the base, but completely lost it with the patterning towards the right tip.

The Unusual Deer Skull - the Antlers in Oil Pastels

Some more bold colour is present here with oil pastel - I did this picture both to try out some mixing of colours and to highlight the difference in the size and shape. I did a few layers of oil pastel, lightest to darkest, and then scribbled over it in pencil. I think I even went up to 8B for a bit of fun!

The Unusual Deer Skull - on the Carpet

To introduce a bit of colour, I decided that I would make the skull look almost completely white and put it onto a very colourful background. I took the pattern from the middle of the carpet in our living room. I was going to do it very bold, but after I'd done the first coat, I realised I quite liked the faded, patchy look. Not that the carpet is... very much.

The Unusual Deer Skull - Charcoal

Here's a picture inspired by a technique that I saw being used at one of my life drawing classes - cover a piece of paper with layers of charcoal, and rub out sections to create a picture like a photo negative. The placement on the paper isn't great, but it does look very noble with those long, slender antlers.

The Unusual Deer Skull - Monochrome

This is a picture I did of a deer skull that I bought. It was advertised, I thought rather unkindly, as having a 'freak' antler. It's not chipped and missing, the shorter antler here has actually grown into a strange knobbly blob. You can see the hatching technique I was talking about displayed very well here. I got so into it that I've started using my dip pens for outlines, and a scratchy drawing pen for the shading and surface detail.

The comeback - the Beginning of Ink Hatching

Well, it's been far too long since I last posted, and I've got lots to share. I'll do a little explaining first though - I've had some other studies that have been taking up my time, I went on holiday for a bit, and I also spent an age trying to decide on what to draw as the subject of my final assignment in my sketchbooks. Anyway, I've begun here with a drawing I did and completely forgot about, which is significant as a venture into a black and white shading technique I hadn't tried out on a large scale before. After this, I spent quite a while doing similar drawings in one of my books that I'm rather proud of, and after a bit of practice, in the drawings I'm posting next, I think you'll see the result.