Lions, Grass, Lions, Grass, Grass, Grass!!!

Hopefully you had a great time over Easter. We had family and lots of grandchildren staying, so we had a wonderfully, boisterous and fun filled time.

As far as the art goes, it’s mostly been getting my head down working on the lion piece that is my entry into Wildlife Artist of the Year. As a result, I’ve been a bit slack in letting you have updates, which means I’ve actually finished most of the ink work. So below are a few pictures of the work in progress.

In my last email, I had just started doing the grass and said that it was a bit of a nightmare. I’ve done it all now and I can say that I wasn’t wrong 🙂 However, having now done it, I do feel that I’ve got closer to capturing the true spirit of grass than I ever have before. I remember doing some at art collage and thinking that I really hadn’t cracked it and that I wanted to do an ultimate grass picture at some point in the future, just to prove that I could. I’m not saying that I’ve 100% cracked it here, but I don’t think I’m too far off.

After doing the grass, I moved onto the main feature of the work. The male. I did have to correct a few mistakes in my initial sketch here. The main was nowhere near wide enough and the body was too small in comparison to the head. Luckily, I was able to fix the issues before I got too far into the drawing, so I think we’re all good.

Here’s the full piece as it stands right now. The plan was to fade things out a bit in the lower right hand corner, to really show the drawing, but I’m now thinking it doesn’t really work. So, more work is probably needed there. I’ll live with it for a few days though, just to make sure and see if there’s anything else that needs changing. 

As ever, your thoughts would be greatly appreciated.

After any changes to the ink have been made, it’ll be on to the white paint. Usually I’ve very sure of what’s needed before starting to add the white, but I’m really not certain on this one. So I’ll need to be very careful, after just over 200 hours of work, I really don’t want to ruin it. I may just have to cry if that happens!

Anyway, the next update should be the last one and will reveal the final, finished piece. So keep your eyes peeled for that one!

Thanks again and all the best,

Cy