Elk piece almost done

Last week I got to spend in Tennessee teaching a teacher in-service to 50 art teachers.  Almost everyone seemed to enjoy the class and many were excited to take the medium back into their classrooms to teach.  It was also fun to see the variety of styles and personalities come out in the pieces they created.

This week I felt determined to finish up the large elk, "September Serenade", which is a 2'x3' board.  The background gave me some problems, as seems to be normal for me and backgrounds, but I am fairly happy with how it finished up.  The steamy breath got ousted and a more complete background emerged.  I have signed it and am pretty much calling it done, though may tweak it a bit more tomorrow if I see anything that bugs me.  It is always a balancing act of trying to keep your main subject front and center vs having enough background to make the animal part of its natural environment.

One of my Christmas presents this year was a quiet air compressor to use with my airbrush indoors.  I've already used it a little bit and laid out a white clayboard (uninked scratchboard) for a project, but have to finish up some other stuff (couple of small commissions) before I will be making major strides on that one.

Steaming it up

Well I am still working on Serenade... background trees I am leaving fairly simple and somewhat similar to my other elk piece "The Challenger" on the off chance that they sell as a pair. 

I decided to give this guys some steamy breath to balance the left side of the board.  Not 100% done yet, but inching closer.  The steam is created with very fine grit sandpaper.

September Serenade

I have started a new 24"x36" board of a bull elk, at the request of a collector.  It has the potential of being pre-sold if she likes the end result.  Keep your fingers crossed for me... but I guess if she doesn't like it hopefully some one else will down the road!

I am finding the angle on the head to be more difficult than I expected, in part because my primary reference is not as clear as it could be and I don't have any other photos at quite this angle.  Oh well, I will get it all sorted out.

Here is a bit of detail from the face area.  There are a LOT of lines on the face, building up the values slowly in order to get it just the way I want.

These big boards take time and with aprospective buyer on the elk my pair of wolves has been put on hold for now, but here is a bit of an update on them too.