Speed Drawing: Hornbill Skeleton

Hi everyone! Today´s time-lapse will be an ink & watercolors painting of a Hornbill Skeleton.

Half way through my animal skulls & skeletons series, I felt adding a little bit of color to contrast the large black shapes would be an interesting idea. Hornbill & Toucan´s beaks provided me with a perfect opportunity to introduce colors in the series.

Here is the time-lapse of the painting. The quality is not the best, I had not yet figured out how to light my desk properly when i filmed it. I hope it will still be enjoyable.

D-tube link

Wanna see more of these videos? Subscribe to my YouTube or D-tube channels!

Tip of the day:

Use a water wash with very little ink to do your first shading pass.

There are many techniques to shade ink drawing. Since I rarely do shading studies, do not use references for shading, & improvise on the spot; I tend to shade very slowly and carefully.

I like to build up my shading starting with a very light grey, almost a water wash; my first shading pass is so light you can barely see it. This allows me to define the zones of shade without fear of going too far and messing the painting.

I then superpose 3 or 4 layers of grey shading of different intensity over that initial layer. Each layer is darker than the previous one, thus creating a rough gradient. I usually then add a last pass in which I push some zones of black or very dark grey to increase contrast on interesting areas.

Here is the final result.

Framed prints of this piece are available on my website & limited edition NFTs (10 ) can be purchased on my Makersplace store. Original still available, contact me directly if you are interested.

Material used:

The material used is the same as in my previous ink paintings at the exception of watercolors. For this type of work I like to use watercolors in tubes, my favorite are the Cotman watercolors by Windsor & Newton. I dilute them with very little water & keep their pasty consistency in order to use them like gouache or acrylic paint.

Pen & Ink Fountain Pen
Noodler´s Black Fountain Pen Ink
Water Brush
Kuretake Sumi Ink
Masking Fluid
Arches Paper
Cotman Watercolors Tubes

I hope you enjoyed my post and that it was useful to some of you. Do not hesitate to ask me any questions, I´ll try my best to answer them.

Have a nice day,

Skeenee!

my site| instagram | twitter| makersplace| youtube