Black Widow

A belated Christmas present for my friend Swain.

18"x24", colored pencils, acrylics (highlights), and India ink (eyelashes).











It was a very conscious choice on my part to do as much of this in colored pencil as possible. For one, I'm finding colored pencils to be as versatile as paints. You can really get in there to mix very nice gradations/transitions. It does take patience and it forces you to make decisions on the fly.

And for two, I wanted to try a piece with no solid blacks at all. If it is dark, then I wanted it to be dark through color rather than just a solid black. The only time I used an actual black on this was for the eyelashes with my sable brush and India ink.













Also, once the colored pencils become built up into a waxy film, you can manipulate them to a degree to get a nice blurring effect. This is most prevalent on the leg closest to the muzzle flash.
I took my Yellow colored pencil and really scrubbed across that leg. This technique tends to work best with light colors. I know that blender pencils are available for this very reason, but I don't like them. I'd rather use a color for the same effect instead.

There are more than a few things way off in the drawing itself, but I'm very satisfied with the coloring.