w o l f . & . s k u l l : p r o c e s s

Hey guys,
with this post i am showing the intense confrontation with a drawing of a wolf and a skull of a deer. I was working a lot on the composition, the textures and the shading. How close should the two parts be, which geometrical forms can i add, how can i show the difference between the living animal and the dead skull. I did 14 drawings of one and the same motive. Even if some might look almost the same they are all different. You can see how the drawing changed in this progress and how the lines got more free to the end.
I will start with the final result and afterwards show the drawings from the first one until the final one again, and explain some steps that i worked on.
final Schädel_Wolf.jpg
This is the result of this drawing process, i used ink and a feather for my drawings. Important for me was the contrast between the fur of the wolf and the hard surface of the skull. The tension between life and death. The combination of two elements in one motive, but still beeing able to read each one for themselves.
3 Wölfe Reihe.jpg
Here you can see, how this process started. The wolf and the skull look really different compared to the final drawing. The lines are more stuck and not as free and relaxed as in the drawings more at the end of the process. In this three drawings you can see how i started to use more ink around the eyes of the wolf, so they got stronger and the nose and snout came more to the front. The lines of the antlers of the deer skull became more light on the outside and so it got more depth too.
4 Wölfe Reihe nr1.jpg
This four drawings show the next step in the process. I started to add some leaves to get a stronger connection between the wolf and the skull. You can also see a clearly difference between the lines of the first three drawings and these ones, they are much more ''rough'' and not so stuck anymore. The skull changed its shape a little, the eyes for example went more to the edge. In one drawing i switched the position of the wolf and the skull, but liked it more the other way around and came back to this compositon. I also tried to find the right space between wolf and skull in this row of drawings.
4 Wölfe Reihe.jpg
The next step was mostly to precise the shape of the wolf's head. For me he looks much stronger here. Also i tried to do some shading between the wolf and the skull to create the feeling of a background.
39 Schädel_Wolf.jpg
This picture shows the third last drawing, the wolf got much more fur to make the difference between him and the skull more strong. With dots at the start of the antlers of the deer skull i tried to show also a difference between these two parts and textures.
40 Wolf_Schädel.jpg
This is the second last drawing, which is a bit step to all the drawings before to me. The skull and wolf look like one part that belongs together, but you can still see the difference between them. Also you can see a lot of movement in the wolf's fur, which gives life to the drawing. Some white parts inbetween the fur make the wolf look more wild and give room for the imagination of the observer. What i don't like too much in this drawing is the antlers of the deer. I think they have been more precise in the drawings before.
final Schädel_Wolf.jpg
And here you can see the final result again. The complete drawing has one language of the same kind of lines, compared to the first ones it has much more quality for me. It was very interesting to stay with one motive and see how far it gets and how it changes in the whole process.
Thank you for reading and watching my drawings!! And sorry for my english, which is not the best i guess.. ;)