Chinchillas are adorable. The first time I saw one, I wanted it as a pet, and that desire hasn’t changed (though I’ve never actually had one as a pet up to this point…sad face). Their big ears, fat, furry bodies, and naturally happy and peaceful expressions make them stand out to me among the rodent population, much in the same way that a pizza stands out to me on a table filled with vegetables. A while back, in an attempt to come up with illustration ideas by paring words from 2 different lists, I came up with the combination of chinchilla and coffee. This is my initial rough sketch of that idea:
As you can see, I tend to do my rough sketches on the back of discarded paper that is laying around. I usually regret this later, but when an idea strikes, I just reach for whatever is around! I liked the way this looked, so I redrew that image on nice card stock, refining my initial sketch and adding lots more details. When comparing this sketch with the rough sketch, it’s immediately evident that I used photo reference from google images to work out the details of the face, ears, tail, and how those features interact with the body in terms of placement. When drawing animals, photo reference is extremely important! I also changed the cup from a mug to more of a nice teacup. Chinchillas are picky about the elegance of their coffee cups. Here is my refined sketch:
After finishing my refined sketch, my life got so busy that I wasn’t able to return to it for a few weeks. At that point, I decided that there was too much going on at the center of interest (which I would argue is the face/nose) with the whiskers, coffee cup, and steam from the coffee, so I decided to just erase the whiskers and redirect the steam away from the face. This gives everything more room to breath, so to speak. This is my updated sketch:
The inks for this one were really weird, primarily because I wanted to do the eyes in watercolor, so I only outlined the eye shape in ink. I had this inked chinchilla with lifeless eyes staring at me from my art table for several days, and each time I saw it, I was a little more convinced that it just wasn’t going to look right even after I added the colors. Fortunately, that wasn’t the case. After adding colors, I used white out to add some highlights to his nose, the right edge of his head and body, and his coffee cup. I think it turned out pretty well over all.
If you ever have questions about anything I’ve discussed here or just about art in general I’m more than happy to answer them. Just post your questions in the comments section and I’ll get back to you.Thanks for stopping by!
I then refined this idea, focusing on otter facial characteristics, the otter’s overall expression, and the details of the slice of pizza, and generally finalizing the details of his pose, fur and whiskers:
Now satisfied with my pencil drawing, I inked this guy and started coloring. My first attempt was too dark, due to indecision on my part about how dark I wanted to make him. I kept going back over the figure with darker and darker paint, and wound up horribly overworking the image. I also forgot to leave a strip of white at the top of his nose to indicate the gleam of the light on his wet nose. Here it is:
On my next attempt, I wound up making a mistake while inking the bottom of his tummy, and the lines got really dark. I wasn’t sure it was bad enough to start over, so I went ahead and added colors. I overworked his midsection again, but it’s not that noticeable in the scan. However, I decided that my inking mistake stood out too much and that I would start agian. Here’s my second attempt:
On my third attempt, seen at the top of this post, my inks were better, my colors were comparable to my second attempt, and I didn’t overwork any areas of the color. It is a pain to ink the same image over and over, but ultimately I’m glad I stuck with it because I really like the concept of the image, and it’s very satisfying to have a completed version of that concept. Thanks for stopping by!
Before starting to add colors, I did some google image research on the coloration patterns of Nubian goats, and decided that I wanted a light brown goat with darker splotches and spots. Many of the goats I saw seemed to be darker towards the top of of their bodies, so I decided to paint the body of the goat wet on wet to get a nice transition of medium to light brown. This worked out pretty well, and then I was able to come in and add the coat pattern, and the body shading once it had dried. I haven’t done much wet on wet painting so it was good to do some experimenting.
It took a lot of sketching, erasing, and frustrated sighs to come up with a final revised pencil drawing. I kept making the cat too angular, too stiff, too, just, wrong looking and I couldn’t figure out why. I finally was able to get a sleek, elegant, happy, fuzzy-looking, proportional, anatomically accurate cat sketch that in my option captured what I found adorable in my itchy-eared cat:
I can’t explain why I chose to color her as a ginger tabby, but it seemed more colorful than the gray and white of the real-life Sushi. I felt like the stripes added a nice visual element, and gave her a very warm personality. This is one of my favorites so far.
As you can see, I wasn’t sure whether to have the frog’s mouth open or closed, but overall, I stayed with this basic composition through to the finished image. Next, I added more details, figured out what the frog should look like, what the little girl should be wearing, and all that good stuff:
In my mind I saw this girl sort of as a little farm girl whose front adult teeth have just come in, so they’re very prominent. I also decided she’d be wearing overalls instead of a dress, but would be barefoot. After sitting on the image for a little while, I decided to give her teeth less definition, and make the frog’s head smaller. I also added some wrinkles to the frog’s neck where the girls hands are pressing into it, which help to give the frog a sense of weight and helps to sell idea that these two characters are interacting. Here is the finalized pencil sketch:
Now satisfied with my pencil sketch, I inked the image and made some color choices. I decided to give the girl red hair, and at the last minute gave her a bunch of freckles. The standard “shorthand” in illustrating for freckles is three dots on the cheek and maybe one on the nose, but the people I know with freckles have many, many more than that, and I wanted to try to incorporate that into this image:
Unfortunately, she looked like she had chicken pox or something. I was bummed. It was also clear that I had over-inked her hair, so the red wasn’t really showing through. I decided to re-ink the image and start over, ending up with the image at the top of the post. I made sure not to ink her hair so much, and to not make the line for the frog’s mouth so thick, and then gave her fewer freckles and made her hair a brighter shade or orange. Over all, I think the image is better for it. Well, that’s the story of this image…thanks for stopping by!
Once I had inked this image and done a bit of Google research on the specifics of basset hound coloration, I used a little wet-on-wet technique to blend some gray into the various brown spots. I’m still experimenting with how best to do this, but I like the results this time around. Here are my inks for this image (you’ll notice that I changed the position of the left eye in the final image using photoshop to make him look less googly-eyed):
Upon review, I realized that his arms were too long, and his legs were too short. I also decided to give the frog a smug look instead of a disgruntled look, as if he’s now used to being carried around by this monk, and is pleased that he’s found what he considers to be “the sweet life.” I redrew this image to incorporate these changes, and liked the results a lot more. I then did some google image research to see what Tibetan monks wear, and discovered that the fabric is wrapped around the body much more than I had drawn it, and there was often a big piece that draped down their front which would provide me the opportunity to put in a lot of interesting wrinkles and folds, so I updated his clothing. Here is my pencil sketch:
