One of my goals for 2024 was to create some larger wildlife artworks, this is challenging for a coloured pencil artist, as it’s a notoriously slow medium, especial when you create realistic animal drawings! I wanted a piece that I could enter into the Association of Animal Artists Spring exhibition, they have a maximum total width for all three pieces, I’d already decided on the other two and didn’t have much room to play with! A tall but narrow drawing would work, I’d never drawn a giraffe, so it was the obvious animal to choose!
Choosing the Reference Photo
I’m a regular visitor to Bristol Zoo Project to take reference photos, where they have three gorgeous giraffes. Giraffes are curious creatures and are a popular with visitors to the Project. I really wanted my drawing to capture the character of these unique animals, but I’d never been lucky enough to get a photo that would allow me to do this. Instead, I turned to my favourite alternative resource for reference material, the Wildlife Reference Photos for Artists website. There are hundreds of stunning images of giraffes, but one of a mother and baby giraffe by Johanna Kok caught my eye as exactly what I was looking for!
Creating the Drawing – My Process
I always start by importing my reference image into Photoshop Elements and trying different compositions until I find something I’m happy with.
I knew I wanted to have a vivid, out of focus background, and PanPastels are my go to medium to achieve this kind of look. This meant the obvious surface to work on was Pastelmat, and I chose white, to make sure the colours stayed nice and vibrant. As I knew what colour background I wanted, I decided to put it in first. This means cutting a mask using Frisket film, a clear self adhesive film that would protect the area where I wanted to draw the giraffes, which I would do using coloured pencils in my usual realistic drawing style.
Background completed, I moved on to drawing the giraffes. I usually start with my softer pencils, such as Caran d’Ache Luminance and Derwent Drawing, moving to firmer pencils such as Derwent Lightfast and Faber Castell Polychromos later in the drawing. The softer pencils are great for blocking in the shapes, colours and tones, whereas the former pencils are easier to keep sharper, so are great for adding texture and detail. In reality though, I often end up reaching for the pencil that is closest to the colour I want to use! White Pastelmat is one of the hardest colours to work on, it takes SO many layers of pencil to create the depth and vibrancy and achieve a realistic drawing!
Why the name Cwtches?
I was pleased with how the drawing turned out, but the last step (after framing of course) was to give it a title. “Cwtch” is a Welsh word that is commonly used in Wales and means cuddle or hug, so even though it’s more Wenglish and not proper Welsh, I chose “Cwtches” as it seemed fitting!
I’ve had greetings cards made from this drawing, which are available in my Folksy shop, with limited edition fine art prints coming soon!
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