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Description
In this scene, the protagonist and her traveling companions pause by a stream in a forest. Byron the cross fox curls up to rest while Silvia the red fox and Lauren the gray wolf maintain a watchful sentry perspective. The cold water beside them flows ever onward as the party pauses their journey to assess the local area. These three characters, the protagonist Lauren and the two foxes, form a sort of "hero trio" in my novel-to-be "Transpecies," in which some cognitively enhanced animals seek sanctuary in a dangerous and uncertain future America. If you like, you can check out my gallery folder for the story and/or request the prose manuscript to learn more.

After some nine sketchbook pages of assorted doodles, I set out to draw a full traditional picture on the tenth page of my new Strathmore sketchbook. You can probably see a few imprints of drawings on the previous pages that pressed in to this page... like some fox body outlines and an icosahedron (solid with triangular faces). It's been a long time since I last did a traditional picture, and it was a pretty nice experience for three hours or so as I drew it earlier in the afternoon today. I worked with a set of 18 Caran d'Ache colored pencils as well as an H Prismacolor sketching pencil in the beginning stage. I used a kneaded rubber eraser to remove most traces of my initial sketches. I also had my Note 4 beside the sketchbook as I worked so that I could pull up digital reference pictures of wolves and foxes. Listening to new and old favorite songs along the way helped to make this a pretty great afternoon of art. I used an Epson photo scanner and Photoshop CC to enhance the scanned image of this colored pencil drawing. Specifically, I used the watercolor filter at 60% or so opacity with the cutout filter just below 30% opacity as the top most filter to adjust the scan. While there are still some faint blank spaces owing to the imprints on the paper and my loose strokes, I feel strongly that the digital edits enhanced the overall coherence and consistency of this picture.

Comments and critique are greatly appreciated.

Description
In this scene, the protagonist and her traveling companions pause by a stream in a forest. Byron the cross fox curls up to rest while Silvia the red fox and Lauren the gray wolf maintain a watchful sentry perspective. The cold water beside them flows ever onward as the party pauses their journey to assess the local area. These three characters, the protagonist Lauren and the two foxes, form a sort of "hero trio" in my novel-to-be "Transpecies," in which some cognitively enhanced animals seek sanctuary in a dangerous and uncertain future America. If you like, you can check out my gallery folder for the story and/or request the prose manuscript to learn more.

After some nine sketchbook pages of assorted doodles, I set out to draw a full traditional picture on the tenth page of my new Strathmore sketchbook. You can probably see a few imprints of drawings on the previous pages that pressed in to this page... like some fox body outlines and an icosahedron (solid with triangular faces). It's been a long time since I last did a traditional picture, and it was a pretty nice experience for three hours or so as I drew it earlier in the afternoon today. I worked with a set of 18 Caran d'Ache colored pencils as well as an H Prismacolor sketching pencil in the beginning stage. I used a kneaded rubber eraser to remove most traces of my initial sketches. I also had my Note 4 beside the sketchbook as I worked so that I could pull up digital reference pictures of wolves and foxes. Listening to new and old favorite songs along the way helped to make this a pretty great afternoon of art. I used an Epson photo scanner and Photoshop CC to enhance the scanned image of this colored pencil drawing. Specifically, I used the watercolor filter at 60% or so opacity with the cutout filter just below 30% opacity as the top most filter to adjust the scan. While there are still some faint blank spaces owing to the imprints on the paper and my loose strokes, I feel strongly that the digital edits enhanced the overall coherence and consistency of this picture.

Comments and critique are greatly appreciated.