This time using pinks amongst it’s natural colours… because why not? Something unexpected I can experiment with. See where it takes me.
On top of the coloured pencils, I’ve introduced the Caran D’ache Neocolour II crayons (which I am LOVING) I’m being VERY careful with this because I really don’t know how it’s all going to work.
The face still needs some work but so far but the crayons are helping me push the depth and colour more.
Probably not the best drawing to experiment with but we’re here now.
Fingers cross I can make this all work 🤞 I have high hopes for this one.
Picking out a reference to draw is always the most fun yet daunting. What can I pick out that will be give me the most satisfaction, challenge and gratification?
What textures can I draw? How will the animal look on paper? Do I allow white space or add a background? How do I crop the photo?
These are all the questions I generally ask myself when looking for artwork I want to create.
I found a photo of the Jaguar looking up to the sky and the texture of the neck hooked me in. This one would be a fun challenge.
To start the draft, I applied the grid method and sketched out the Jaguar. I then picked out the coloured pencils.
For this Jaguar, I changed up my preferences and favoured the Faber Castell pencils over the Derwent Drawing pencil. This Jaguar had detail that I really wanted to capture and I’ve found that the Faber Castell pencils can create finer strokes and lines.
The Derwent Drawing pencils I still used but instead, as a base layer for the drawing.
This time around I started with the eyes and face, working around the ears, then down to the body.
The neck area, I left to last colouring in the dark areas of the fur, in the direction of the fur. This area was layered multiple times to create a soft and messy look. I used a black pencil to add random hairs.
Change of ideas
Although you can put plans in place for your artwork, sometimes you can’t really see it taking shape until it’s actually on paper. And sometimes what you have in your minds eye, doesn’t really work out to be the same on paper…
At this point of the drawing, my original idea was to have another green coloured background. However, with so much white space above the face, even with a background, I felt the area was going to look a bit odd.
I needed something else to fill in that space. I had an idea that this Jaguar would instead be looking up something interesting, perhaps something tasty…?
So I decided to incorporate a little mouse over the Jaguar.
I used the Faber Castell pencils to add the little details in. My aim was not to add too much detail into the mouse as I wanted the Jaguar to still be the main focus.
I’m not quite use to adding in detail so small so this little guy proved to be a little trickier than anticipated!
When things don’t go to plan
Now that the animals were drawn I could get stuck into the background.
The original idea was to do a green leafy background, but I thought that it would be too much of a distraction so decided on a green / bluish blurry background instead.
Using the Faber Castell coloured pencils, I went ahead and coloured in the background. But once I had the base layer down, I just wasn’t happy with it.
The issue I came across was the mouse disappearing. It blended in with the colours I had chosen and even adding more colour into the background to make it darker, it still didn’t work. The colours were quite distracting and were taking the limelight away from the mouse.
At this point, I wasn’t too sure what to do. If the drawing took me 2 minutes, then it could have been something I scrapped and started again. An A2 drawing that has taken me hours and weeks to do, that wasn’t going to be a choice.
I left the drawing for a while to conjure up a few ideas. One plan I had was to draw another Jaguar on black paper for a black background. Not ideal for this one, but at least the Jaguar and the mouse would stand out.
I went through 2 Faber Castell black pencils for the black background. If you look closely, It’s not as smooth as I want it but it’s as smooth as I can get it. I didn’t use solvents, although in hindsight I could have, but if absolutely necessary, can try to ‘fix’ it at a later date.
At this point I just stuck to what I knew.
Final thoughts
This doesn’t feel like my best work because I didn’t stick to my original plans and tried a few things that didn’t work out. It wasn’t a complete and utter failure though.
The drawing did take a lot longer than anticipated due to other obligations and life in general. I had more time to think about what I wanted to do with this drawing which led to ideas continually changing.
For its challenges, the process of drawing the Jaguar did end up being a great one. It was great to draw the neck area and aim to achieve the look of messy fur. And the Jaguar itself stands out the way I wanted it to. With a bit more detail drawn in, I was able to practice a few new techniques while aiming to achieve a realistic looking Jaguar drawing.
Favouring the Faber Castell pencils also led for the drawing to look a little sharper, while the Derwent Drawing pencils would have created a softer, creamier look. Knowing me, I’ll most draw this Jaguar again using the Derwent Drawing pencils. Maybe a smaller version though…
The mouse, I think, adds a cute touch to the drawing but can’t be sure if I’ll draw something like this again.
I’m quite liking drawing the close up of animals , creating a lot of detail to make them look as realistic as possible. I still have a few more to plan out!
By the end of 2023 I decided that I wanted to create a largeish scale wildlife drawing and I opted for size A2 since that was the paper I had available.
I choose my references from Wildlife Reference Photos and after a few days of scanning the photographs I fell upon the reference of a Jaguar taken by Stephanie Swayne.
To apply the drawing to an A2 sheet, I use the grid method. I find it the most reliable to scale the drawing to the page and draw the reference onto the paper also making the least the mistakes.
Starting on this piece, I decided to start at the bottom of the page and leave the face and eyes to last. I usually start with the eyes when I draw the animal but wanted to leave it to last to bring the piece together at the very end – I actually won’t be doing this again because it frustrated me too much and by the time I got to the face I wanted to see what the jaguar was going to look like – tested too much of my patience!
The pencils I used were the Derwent Drawing pencils. I’ve used these pencils a few times for some smaller drawings but have never used them for a drawing like this. I found the colours suited the animal really well since I wanted to use tans, browns, reds and yellows throughout the piece.
The pencils have a great ‘creaminess’ to them, almost like a crayon, so I was able to blend the colours together really nicely.
Along with the Derwent Drawing pencils, I used the Faber Castell pencils over the top, drawing on any finer details, such as the fur strokes as I find these pencils to be better creating finer details. I also used a few of the Caran D’ache Luminance pencils to burnish a few colours together.
Because this is a large drawing there was a lot of layering going on. I start with a base colour and add a mid colour and then the top colour on top to create more depth to the colour. I didn’t want the colours to look so ‘flat’.
The main detail I wanted to focus on though was the fur. I drew in each fur stroke, which as you can imagine, takes a lot of time and patience, however by doing this I can create more texture, trying to mimic the way the fur looks and feels.
I knew the chin was going to be the most challenging part so I worked up the side of the jaguar, towards the nose and face. Once I had the mouth area almost complete I decided to draw the chin.
The chin, in fact, was the most challenging for me in this piece.
I erased the chin 4-5 times before I finally settled on what I was happy with.
I couldn’t quite get the detail I wanted on the chin. I felt at the time that the hairs were not looking fine enough or ‘messy’ enough as I was trying to control the direction of the fur.
When I went into this piece, I told myself not to rely too heavily on the reference photo and to give myself some creative freedom – not every piece of fur had to be exactly copied!
In turn, this ended up being a HUGE challenge due to my past pieces of drawing pet portraits, I usually try my hardest to stick to the reference.
I had to give myself a few breaks and come back to the piece when I was in a better mindset – something I’ve learnt works best when I get ‘stuck’ or frustrated.
Towards the end of my drawing I’ll take a photo and carefully compare to the reference to see where I can make improvements. I look for areas of improvement; where to apply more colour or deeper colours, areas that could do with more detail or even less detail.
I used a paint pen to create the bright white whiskers and highlights in the eye.
Once I had the Jaguar complete I then moved onto the background.
Most of the backgrounds in my drawings I leave blank so this was definitely something I didn’t want to mess up. I knew I wanted a green background to compliment the colours I had used.
I posted a photo of my drawing into Canva and tried out a few green backgrounds to get a sense of what I wanted.
I used Prismacolor pencils to create the background as I find those pencil’s to be more vibrant. Instead of using the tip of the pencil to colour the background, I used the tip of the pencil to create shavings (using a sharpener) place the shavings onto the paper and using a tissue, blend the colours together.
This way there are less pencil markings on the paper and I can create that ‘softness’ texture.
I completed the Jaguar end of April 2024 and decided to enter the piece into the Royal Melbourne Show.
This was my third drawing to enter in the last few years and it’s always great to see your artwork displayed alongside other talented artists’ creations.
To my absolute surprise, I won first place in the Royal Art, Craft and Cookery competition! Not only that I won best in show! Talk about a surprise!
The most interesting, I found, was the comment from the judges;
“Congratulations on this exquisite portrait, ‘Jaguar’, which is sensitively observed and a dynamic composition. Your use of colour is both sophisticated and confident, and you clearly love drawing. The texture of the nose, and the shine of the eyes, the delicacy of the whiskers, are of particular note. Keep up the incredible work. A masterful work!”
My aim of this piece was to just draw. To draw because I do love drawing and creating artwork, and with this piece I really wanted to create something for myself.
I took my time with this piece and even though it had its frustrations, I trusted the process and ended up having a great time creating it.
I was really pleased the judges were able to see this in my artwork.
This Jaguar is the first of the 4 – 5 I want to draw. I’d like to say it’s a ‘collection’ however I’m onto my third Jaguar now and each Jaguar is quite different. I had a plan on what I wanted each piece to look like, but throughout each piece my ideas change. So for now I’ll go with the flow and see where it all takes me.
Melissa America 