Raven portrait in progress 6 - A difficult passage

This was a difficult passage: Raven’s nose and the muzzle around the nose. It required careful attention to the reference photo because of the dark spots and markings on the skin across top of his nose that shows through the lighter hairs. I like how that little patch of pink skin surrounded by gray skin above the nose turned out. I used pale mauve pencil layered very lightly over light grey to give it just the faintest tinge of pink.

The "nose leather" of a dog's nose, with its convoluted shapes, combined with shiny reflections (from being wet), is always a challenging combination of shapes to capture correctly. And the values: very dark values in the front of the nose-leather where it’s shadowed, transitioning to very light values as it curves up over the top where it’s shiny and catching the light. 

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I continued working my way down Raven’s white muzzle on the right, and then completed the lower left and joined the two halves together under the nose.

Next, his pink tongue.

🎨 Prismacolor pencil on “Sand” Canson Mi-Teintes paper, 16 x 20 inches.

“Raven”

Conant’s Raven Nevermore CDX RN

Commissioned by Cathy Nearman.