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Crow: Art

I did this pretty drawing of a girl and a crow on August 3rd, 2017. I thought that I could go through how I got to my final results.

First off, of course, I grabbed a few reference pictures to draw from. Having references is super important. Most people find it really difficult to make accurate proportions without them, and since I've never drawn a crow before I didn't have enough experience to draw one from memory. It is not letting me add the third one, but it is just a picture of eyes that I grabbed while doing the shading.

Secondly, I drew my reference lines. In pencil of course. Most of the time these lines are absolutely essential, but some times you can skip them like I did with painting for "Painting With Plants." I like to have my reference lines be exactly what I will follow when I start the finishing stages.

The next step is always different for every artist. It tends to be different for me depending on the day as well. But for this piece, I started inking int the part where I was least comfortable, just so that when/if I messed up, I didn't waste as much time.

I will go back and touch up some of the above in later stages, in fact I touch up almost everything as I go on. Making places darker as I need to in order to keep up with the parts that are supposed to be darkest or lightest. But the next thing I work on is what is in the foreground, and then the parts around it, going deeper into the piece.

And lastly I work on the light shading of the face and its features, leaving the eyes for last. Which, as I got to this part in the drawing, I realized is a very bad idea. Because messing up the eyes could completely ruin everything that you've worked on up to that point. The eyes have that power. They can easily make or break a piece.

And that is that, it is over. Complete. All it needs is a tiny signature in one of the corners. I don't usually draw in pen. I don't like it. Pen is messy and often ruins a drawing with ink splotches. You can see some on the lips here. But I do like the way that pen looks when it is done. The defined lines make you unfocus your eyes to actually see the picture, which hides a lot of little mistakes that you make. I do go into a photo editor program to sharpen up the image, because my phone's camera isn't the best for this kind of thing.
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