Drawing Animals

This week’s video featured a tiger drawing, which was really fun – especially because of the Derwent Coloursoft pencils. I forgot how waxy they are and relaxing to work with. I did have, however, some issues with a few of them due to the formula not being very consistent or just plain different (which made the lead very scratchy instead of soft), but because my set is quite old, I don’t know if the company got better at producing them during the last couple of years or if there are still some issues. Overall, I really like the pencils and I think they’re worth trying out.  

Due to drawing a tiger, it made me remember a challenge I did a while ago for school. The task was to choose a photo with a motif you liked and draw it using different techniques. In my case, I choose a tiger (as expected). We were meant to practice color contrast and really explore different approaches to drawing the same thing multiple times and observe the difference. Needless to say, I really liked the whole process.

It went according to these steps:

1.      Original photo

2.      Draw it in black and white (using a graphite pencil)

3.      Draw it with dots (using a fineliner)

4.      Draw it with primary colors (color pencils)

5.      Draw it with complementary colors (color pencils)

6.      Draw it with primary and complementary colors (color pencils)

7.      Make a collage (I handmade all the collage papers)

*I can't remember, but I'm pretty sure you could choose your preferred medium.

(click on the picture for a better view)

The end result is in the picture above and I think it looks really cool, especially put together like this.  

I think I enjoyed making the collage (7) the most out of these. It was different to how I’d usually approach a motif and it really opened up a whole new range of possibilities. I’ve made some collage pieces after, both traditional and digital, but this tiger is still one of my favorites. It also makes me want to try out collaging again, a couple of years later, just to see what I come up with. It’s messy – that’s for sure, but you can get around that by using pincers and other tools that make it easier to place the whole piece together. It takes a level of planning that is different to illustration and I think it’s liberating in a way and a great idea to fight art block – at least for me since I tend to have a certain (fixed) way I prefer to do things. That’s what makes using different mediums a great idea to shift your way of thinking.

The other drawings were pretty much straight forward. The complementary colors tiger (5) was weird to me, because I’d never use these colors together. Primary colors sure, but orange, green and violet never, so that one was the “weird color contrast challenge” I guess.

For this post I also wanted to prepare some of my early drawings of animals that I kept, because to be honest I started out drawing animals. I loved animals (and I still do) and I would take books and encyclopedias and try to copy (not trace) animals on paper. I remember having a lot of fun with that for hours. I think I was around 10 when I drew these. At least one of these animals deserves a before and after, I sadly don’t have any tigers from that time, but I do have a cheetah and a running cat (what species it is I have no idea), which is already a good start! (:

We all start somewhere and these are really one of the oldest drawings I have. Once I started watching anime in high school it all shifted for me - that's when i started getting interested in drawing people/the human figure which was very challenging (and it still is and it will always remain so). Those old anime drawings deserve a remake as well.

I hope you found the read interesting! I find I always have a moment of reflection watching at my old work - it's amazing to see how skills improve over the years.

I wish you a great day, have fun and draw on!

Vanteri, 24. 1. 2025