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This album shows my technique for making straw in a scene. A whole lot of it. 1 In my last post, I had finished the Frisbee scene, and put in a bit of the straw detail around Scout’s barn-hunt figure on the gold underpainting. It looked like this:  Next I have a whole lot of straw to fill in. If you read my post about barn hunt, you know that Scout is searching for rats hidden among straw. There will be a tunnel entrance below and in front of his face. That’s where you see th

The two action figures in Scout’s triple portrait are finished, and now I have a decision to make: Should I finish the grass around the Frisbee figure first, or the straw around the barn hunt figure?  Pic 1 explains why that decision was important, and the rest of the pics show how I resolved it.  1 At this point the backgrounds are just flat color, no detail. You may remember I masked off the two action figures so I could do Scout’s black-and-white coat with colored pencils

Scout’s head in the barn hunt pose was slow going because it was so important to get his expression just right. I had enough time and energy left the day I finished his face to start putting in the straw around the figure. That goes much more quickly. It’s not necessary to be precise to what is in the reference photo. Now I have a decision to make. Should I fill in the grass next, or the straw…. I will finally be working with colored pencils on my underpainting. You may remem

The expression on Scout’s face will make-or-break the barn hunt pose, the third figure in a triple portrait of Scout. 1 Doing Scout’s forehead. His smooth head that makes you want to kiss it.  The little creases in his white blaze on his forehead are extremely important: tiny details but they show his intense concentration. 2 It took me a while to do those shapes in his white blaze. Very slow and painstaking like doing an eye, with a glance at the reference photo every couple

In my previous post I described how I used the grey paper color, which I had masked off when I made the green and gold underpainting, to give me the right base color for Scout’s black and white coat.  Check out how I use that for Scout’s front leg in this post.  And how I’m starting to utilize the gold underpainting now to make the straw. 1 It took quite a while to do all of Scout’s black coat on his body. There are more pencil colors in a Border collie’s black coat than you