Yawning Tiger

 

Yawning Tiger 

I finished two pen and ink drawings this last week despite being distracted by a missing cat. My very old cat got out when I wasn't paying attention properly. Perhaps I did the drawing so efficiently as a distraction to keep from worrying about the cat. He got home on Friday night but he had to be rescued from a high wall in the dark. 

The first drawing I finished was this tiger. It is pen and ink on graphic film with coloured pencil on the reverse. It is more challenging than you would think to get the right tones to show through on the right side. Graphic film is translucent but not clearly transparent. So colours are dulled, and blending one colour over another needs to be done backwards. You have to use brains more than feelings. 

A Tiger Enjoying Water

Swimming Tiger 

Here is another of my pen and ink drawings with coloured pencil background. 

I was supposed to be concentrating on pen and ink drawings of horses, but I had already started on this drawing of a tiger and I couldn't resist finishing it. 

I am still learning how to do pen and inks in the 6 x 4 inch format. I have probably got too much colour in the background here. 

I use an eraser to soften the pen marks. It can make them lighter and/or thinner and makes the drawing more subtle. Here I let the drawing dry too long and I couldn't delete the excess ink. 

I know I am telling you all too much about what is wrong with this drawing. I should pretend that it is exactly how I planned. But that is not my character. 

The original does look much better than this scan. Scans exaggerate the black pen marks. 

Tiger miniature

 

Today I found time to scan the tiger miniature that I drew for my son and daughter-in-law Christmas gift. They saw it when it was unfinished. 
This is one of the ACEOs that I have done in pen and ink on graphic film so I can colour parts of the reverse. I enjoy doing these miniatures. This was the first time I have done a complex colour areas like the tiger stripes. In the past I have added simple colours to the reverse for simple decoration. Working on the stripes in reverse was a challenge. I suppose it was a bit like glass painting. I had to apply the colours backwards from a normal coloured pencil drawing. 
I plan to do some more tiger miniatures and I hope that I remember the lessons I learned from this one.