Titan portrait in progress 7 - dancing to the pencil strokes

After I finished the collar I decided to do Titan’s paws next, instead of working my way down his chest. But first I needed to do the blanket. Here’s why:

I rendered the fabric in a really loose way, as you see. I wanted to do that with fast, energetic pencil strokes - big sweeping strokes using the whole flat of the pencil core for the broadest strokes possible. I didn’t want to complete the paws first, in case those wild strokes overlapped the paws and I needed to erase them a bit there before working on the detailed paws. Can’t have blue pencil going into the areas where I intend to use rusts and orange. 

You can see where I got really loose and scribbley with my pencil strokes near the bottom right and left corners of the artwork. Artists may be able to relate: it feels really good. I was “dancing” to fast music with my hands when I did that. 😄

This is yet another example of using the paper color to do the work. In this case the background. Sometimes I use the paper color to do a lot of the work in the figure, sometimes the background, sometimes both. I plan that when I choose the paper color, at the very beginning of the piece. It’s part of the strategy of creating the artwork. 

I like the way the fabric came out. It makes a nice setting to show off Titan. It’s not precisely like the blanket in the reference photo. I changed the folds a bit to better enhance the composition: leading your eye to Titan.

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

Portrait of Titan, in progress

Commissioned by Alicia McCarthy.