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wedge tail eagle-work in progress (1 Viewer)

Trevor Hawkins

Well-known member
I mentioned in another thread that i was working on a largish pen and ink picture of Australia's largest eagle species. It's a wedge-tail eagle and they are extremely majestic birds as i hope i'm conveying through the picture. I'm doing it with a very fine technical pen and it takes many hours to build up with dots. So far, to this stage i would say i've spent roughly 12-15 hours on it in total. I would think there's at least twice that again before it's finished. I thought it might be nice to show it progressively being completed, i probably should have taken a picture earlier than this stage but oh well. Hope you enjoy.
 

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Looks great! I've tried painting with dots a couple of times, in my small sketchbook and with thicker pens. I think it's a lot of fun, but I don't know if I'd have the patience for such a big piece. I look forward to seeing the progress!
 
Looks great! I've tried painting with dots a couple of times, in my small sketchbook and with thicker pens. I think it's a lot of fun, but I don't know if I'd have the patience for such a big piece. I look forward to seeing the progress!

It does take a lot of time resparza, but it also lets you slowly and progressively build up the picture which i find enjoyable. This type of artwork also allows me to stop and start whenever i'm in the mood and even do some only for a few minutes if that's all the time i have, rather than have to complete sections as i would with paints or even pencils for that matter.
 
Tremendous detail there Trevor especially the eyes and beak of the bird,seems the overall balance of the head gives you the base to proceed.
Really excellent work Trevor many thanks for sharing.
GEORGE.
 
Thankyou George, yes, it's the eyes and the head in that artwork that your eye immediately goes too so that is the focal point where most of the detail goes into. Glad you enjoyed it, many thanks, Trevor.
 
Thankyou Corvus cornix. It was fun doing that step by step documentation, i've never done that before and it's interesting to look back on how it progresses. It would have also been interesting to do some stage by stage pics of the very detailed areas to see how much building up happened as well. Maybe next time. I've just completed a large fish in that method with a plain gouache background. I'll post it up later. It's not a bird but some readers may be interested.
I'm not sure what my next bird project will be yet mate. i'll post up when i do.
Regards Trevor
 
Trevor, Great stuff! :t:
The dot work is amazing! Love the Wedgie :king:
Do you ever have cause, or a method to remove dots? Or do you follow a less is more approach from the conservative side of the line? I can imagine with the mental anguish and stress over whether to add another non-removeable dot or not, it may well be not exactly the most relaxing process in the world! :cat:


Chosun :gh:
 
Thanks Chosun. Putting one or two dots in the 'wrong' spot isn't an issue on such a large work. I've never felt the need to remove any dots thankfully. Because i'm building up from the paper white to the darkest area if anything the hardest part is getting the middle ground right. So i will often simply dot in the outline and slowly build up from there. Generally i'll work on the most detailed area first and get the darkest areas to about 90% complete. Once i know what my darkest area is it's generally just a matter of laboriously building up the midtones and getting those details in. I can always go darker, but never lighter so i'm continually stepping back and checking tonal values.
 
Thankyou John. It is an interesting process. I don't use it that often, i mostly use watercolours or graphite in my artworks, but occasionally i just want to slow it all down and spend longer on one work, and this methods allows me to do that. It's very meditative.
 
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