Snow Leopard in charcoal.
Each time my sister came to visit, she attempted to walk out of my studio with my latest charcoal of a Snow Leopard, which was actually a present for someone else. She loved it so much, I thought I better do one for her. Just about got this finished to give her for a Christmas present. Having to hide it each time she came round, along with the continuing struggle of neuropathy from treatment, meant I was only able to work in bits and pieces, but got there eventually, but only just in time.
The previous Charcoal
This was the previous charcoal I had done which was a present for my Aunt.
Charcoal and watercolour
The very first one was done as an experiment to see how watercolour would sit and mix with the charcoal. I decided to use my usual @archespaper for this one as there were a few things I wanted to try out.
I started with charcoal powder, which stuck to the WP more than I would have liked due to the texture, (NOT surface). Then a bit of work with willow charcoal. Next, I tried some acetone for texture, after watching various Youtube videos. Well, this didn’t work so well on CP. I think as Acetone dries so quickly, along with it being absorbed into the paper, it didn’t make the marks I was looking for. I need to try this on Hot Pressed to see what a difference it would make.
Next came the watercolour, I only wanted to add it in a few places. I found this worked ok in the lighter areas, not so good in the darker ones, but I do like some of it. The other main thing I found was due to the Not Surface and the use of acetone, I couldn’t get back the whites of the paper so well with the eraser, need to pay more attention to the order I do things in.
All in all, I was really pleased with the finished work and will experiment more on this technique in the future.
