Summer Sanctuary

I have just completed a large commission that for many reasons has taken far too long, being on and off the board more times than I have caught Carp. I really wanted to capture a dark old scaley mirror underwater, giving the impression of it just coming into a small clearing with its pectorals just fanning, pausing for that spilt second before disappearing amongst the Lily pads and fronds of Elodea & Milfoil weed.

The customer was quite happy to leave the piece to myself, only stating he wanted a carp in it's natural environment, so it was enjoyable collecting reference material and building the image over the summer in my mind before I tackled the piece. The whole drawing is made up of at least 40+ reference pictures, all brought together hopefully harmoniously to produce the final drawing.

I used the full range of graphite on this work from 9B upto 5H along with a little ink, to give just a small touch of deep black where I thought appropriate.

This is the longest I have spent in man hours on a single work and the picture measures approx 600mm x 400mm

I will let the scaly dark mirror do the talking.

Bye for now.                    

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