My rendering of a Bobcat. Drawing with charcoal on 16x20 white charcoal paper. Started with matte graphite pencils for first layer, then quickly switched to charcoal to make it darker. Attempted to use white chalk pastel for highlights, which made a grayish muddy mixture, so discontinued soft pastel for highlights.
Picture from Becker1999 (Paul and Cathy)
Columbus Zoo Boo at the Zoo (10/18/08)
That is way cool! My granddaughter is a big fan of the big cats and any wild cat, like the bobcat. Your drawing is amazing. I feel like I could touch his soft fur, and the eyes are beautiful. I love it.
Brenda
Enjoy this so much. The bobcat looks so friendly and I want to reach out and pet him! Love what you did with the background.
Thank you @Brenda @junenez
Critique is more than welcome.
If I had to do it over, I’d choose grey toned paper. I wasn’t able to use white charcoal either, it would not go on highlight areas very well. So I did best I could. Also the charcoal kept coming off super easily and needed lots
Of retouching, which was very easy to do. I finished off with like 3 layers of fixatif. I’m guessing I could’ve used fixatif between charcoal layers.
I think it looks great! I understand the frustration with the charcoal. When we were doing “Karl,” I kept having to go back and reapply. Then when we switched to charcoal pencils, I was able to control it more. I gave Karl one coat of fixative. I’m not familiar with its properties, so I’m not sure about adding between layers.
I’ve found the only medium I can get to do highlights over darker layers is soft pastels. I have every form of pastel and each has its own special qualities. I like working with pastels much more than charcoal. But you certainly achieved a beautiful result in this instance. I wonder if a light-colored soft pastel would work for highlights over charcoal.
Brenda
Very nicely done. Love it.
Hi Sonia. This is really nice. If you don’t mind a little feedback, I think some of the problems you had are because you started with a layer of graphite. Charcoal does not go over the top of graphite very well. That is probably why you had technical difficulties with the highlights too. My personal rule is that if I’m going to combine charcoal and graphite, always do the charcoal first. Hope this helps.
Terri Robichon
That’s absolutely beautiful! I have to play more with charcoal, I have done only one drawing with it.
Sonia,
Your handling of the charcoal is amazing. Beautiful rendering!
Teri
