'Foreboding Change' - NEW

Although I began this drawing late last year, due to its large size, I have only just finished working on it. I have imagined this scene many times in my mind and decided to make some (very quick) preparatory sketches, first to fine tune my thoughts as I was unsure if it was going to feature the elephant or more-so the sky. I asked myself the question: "Is it more about the elephant or the sky"... definitely the elephant, so I went with making him the feature.

I began to block in the elephant with a light coat of pencil following the contours of his structure. Once this was done, I added some darks to develop a bit of form.

I continued to block in the rest of the body before I began adding too much detail.

This took close to a week of drawing to get to this stage.

The white area was left until I found a reference for a tusk in that position as this old bull had only one and I decided to give him two. I also left a part of the trunk unfinished as I wanted to video my process of adding the wrinkles.

Once I had enough detail in the elephant, I was then happy that his structure was looking okay. It was now time to get the background in as I would then have to readjust the values of the elephant.