The Unusual Deer Skull - in Torn Paper and Ink

Here's my (huge) torn paper picture. I tore the pieces, stuck them down (I'm not sure if you can tell from a picture, but the blues are tissue paper, which made things difficult!) and when they'd dried, I scribbled over the whole thing with more ink to add details - I thought I'd hate how inaccurate this idea would be, but it was actually quite... fun?

The Unusual Deer Skull - The Close-ups Part Three

This was actually my first attempt at the ink/charcoal combination, but I've posted it third to make it easier to compare with the torn paper picture. This one is different from the other two, as I've made the background black. I chose this one as the close-up to take into the torn paper exercise partly because I could use more colours to express the darker areas and partly because if it all went wrong, it'd be more obvious what it was, being from a more straightforward angle.

The Unusual Deer Skull - The Close-ups Part Two

This is my favourite of the series. I think that for me, this is as close to perfect as I could have hoped for! The angle - the skull looking away, off the edge, left and slightly forward into the space behind it. The shadows - I improved on the combination of ink and charcoal even as I continued the series. The composition - unintentionally, as I drew, I cropped it just enough for you to see the dark in the bottom-right corner and have it balanced just right in the top-left.

The Unusual Deer Skull - The Close-ups Part One

Here's the first in a series of close-ups. I think that these three pictures are some of my best. They're ink outlines with smooth charcoal shadows, describing both the jagged edges of the bone and it's polished curves. The contrast is what really makes them - how absolutely white the left side of the picture is, and how dark the shadow under the jaw on the right. I'm so proud of them!

The Unusual Deer Skull - in Coloured Ink

I'm very happy with this one too. I thought that I'd really go out of my way and draw from a difficult, half-foreshortening angle, and spend an age mixing ink to be just the right colours. Aaand then I mixed two glasses up and did the yellow highlights on the antlers far too bright. but if you can't forgive that, then I think it's got some great shadows.

The Unusual Deer Skull - in Dramatic Coloured Pencil

Here's a picture that I think is brilliant, if I do say so myself. Having got my old lamp back, but with a stronger bulb, I thought that a good way to find some colour was to put the skull down on a bright contrast colour surface, put the lamp behind it, and draw all the colours that were revealed in the bones. They aren't exactly as the colours appeared, of course, but I'm still very proud of the whole thing. Oh, and the shadows really do begin and end that suddenly!

The Unusual Deer Skull - in Chalk Pastels

I like this chalk version much more, and not just because of learning my lesson from last time and scaling it down a little more, but because when you're using chalk, it forces you to let a little of the background colour through, and that's way more interesting. I especially like the yellowy highlights that I included thanks to having to borrow a different table lamp - normally when I draw, I like to have a white light. You'd expect any colour but white on such a subject to be included only to describe shadows, but not here!