Various and sundry trophies adorned the walls

Day twelve of #Inktober.

Various and sundry hunting trophies adorned the walls of the anteroom. The light from the fireplace made them cast shifting, unsettling shadows onto the walls and ceiling.

I’ve added some process pics after the jump, if you’re interested.

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Some snaps of the my process

This began with a photo my friend Zac had just posted to instagram at the time I posted the small rack of antlers drawing; he told me to check it out, that it may inspire another drawing. Which it did, obviously.

To begin, I bring the image up on my little laptop and add the most basic grid as a reference for scale and proportion, which really speeds the plow in terms of getting things down in pencil.

Here’s my pencil drawing finished. I lightened these lines some with a kneaded eraser before starting, as the shadow would be marker only and I didn’t want the pencil to show through.

Although I intended to snap a few pics during this inking process, I get so wrapped up in it that I invariably forget. But, at least with this you can pretty well see all the work, the lines. It’s like counting grains of sand, or stars. This began with a .005 micron pen, and I did the larger areas, and darkened in some other areas with a .02 micron.

And here is one with most of the marker in place. I had to go into those areas multiple times because my pale grey was dying and I had to use a blender. The blender is hard to work with because it redistributes the pigment more than if you blend with another marker of similar color, so I had to refresh the dark areas many times.

Also the blender bleeds— a lot. Even on this ostensibly “bleedproof” paper made just for ink and markers. As a result of the bleeding, I had to insert a wider line to demarcate the ceiling. I also had to clean up some edges in photoshop after the final scan (at the top of this post).

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more art: @edaggarart & elizabethdaggar.com