Shoshiplatypus

For the third project in the animals module, we are drawing a profile portrait of a magnificent tiger. It is good to be using the pastel pencils again. I do enjoy this medium, but will probably not pursue it after the course is finished. The materials are relatively expensive because the pencils get used up quite quickly, and the special pastel paper is quite pricey too. It takes an age to sharpen the pencils because you can’t use a regular pencil sharpener. Instead you have to shave away the wood with a knife and then sand the pastel core to a point.

The pastel pencils layer nicely, and you can get some pretty fine detail with them. On the whole, I much prefer coloured pencils which are much easier to manage.

The tiger

The outline

Using the white pastel pencil on Mi Teinte pastel paper, I began by drawing the outline and basic shapes of the tiger. This time I opted to use the grid method to get the proportions right, and initially I worked with an HB graphite pencil and put in far too much detail. I went over the relevant parts with the white pastel pencil, erasing the pencil lines as I went, and simplified it. This all took far too long and I wish I’d followed the instructions from the start!

Blocking in the basic colours

Working on the eye

Adding the eye detail and some finer detailing on the srrounding fur brought the tiger to life. The tiger’s eye is quite small relative to its face, unlike that of a domestic cat. We needed a sharp pastel pencil to get the detail. There is a lot of subtlety in the markings of the fur, and we began by looking at this and changing between several colours to get a realistic look.

Working on the tiger’s muzzle

Again, using subtle changes of colour. I spent quite a long time working on the nose, which was quite hard to get just right.

Finishing the drawing

All that remained to complete the pictre was to finish the remaining fur, and add some whiskers.

A closer view of the completed picture.

This was an interesting project to work on. It would be fun to attempt a tiger with coloured pencils.

An earlier tiger picture

Several years ago I made this double page spread in a small art journal, depicting a tiger in acrylics, and quoting some of the lines from the famous William Blake poem “Tyger, Tyger, burning bright” which I always loved at school. Somehow, a “tyger” with a “y” is much more tigery than one with an “i”!

Some time after that, I edited this picture digitally to remove the centre-fold of the book, and adapted the vegetation.

I also used a digitally edited print of this in a mini-album I made about my dad, who was an ophthalmologist. In the 1950s he was approached by a local vet working with a circus. They had two tiger cubs suffering from congenital cataracts and the vet did not feel up to tackling the operation, so he asked Dad to do it. I created a couple of pages about this for the mini-album.

I have always loved tigers.