Here's a demo of a parrot portrait done a few years back...This is how I get around rendering...I hate rendering, but I love drawing and painting!
Step 1: draw in the parrot loosely ( probably a 2B), but identify the detail areas and give them some punch with the line. I also, punch up areas I know will eventually be in shadow. Line is my friend...
Step 2: spray two good passes of workable fixative to keep the pencil drawing from migrating. Then scrub vine charcoal over the entire image to get a velvety wash of charcoal.
Step 3: Lift out highlights with a needed eraser. Notice how the originally line pops back out against the new highlights. Then give it a good spray fix again!
Step 4: Add in more vine charcoal into shadow areas and bolster the line work using an ebony pencil. Notice how effective pencil and vine charcoal play together...and how the drawing is subtly evolving...Fix it again heavily.
Step 5: lay in water soluable oil washes and use water to pull out highlights. Let dry for a little while. Two passes to deepen the saturation ( this photo is at one pass). In this case I didn't let it dry...it was still tacky when I went back in with detail color.
Step 6: use colored pencil for detail areas, caran de arche crayons for subtle color mixing where I didn't want to see lines and then rembrandt pastels for the pure pigment colors in the background and on the highlight portions of the feathers. I love how the pastels grabbed onto the tacky oily backgound and wouldn't let go!
As my painting instructor the legendary Joseph Cintron would say, "Everytime you stop you should have a finished statement...the story may not be done, but the sentence should..."
Know your process. Know your materials. Then keep pushing them further and further until evolves into a new way to say what you need to say...
Total time was about 4.5 hours
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