ARTWRK021 - Titled "The Errol Bull"

The Story of the Drawing:

After a long hiatus from doing traditional pen and ink artwork, I decided with my wife's prompting to give it another try.

I just love moose and they seemed a good place to start. This drawing is based on a photo I took in Errol NH of a bull moose we called in during the rutting season. It actually was a challenge to get him to come to me, but he finally did and I got some stunning images. He was a nice bull, almost dopey in his look but yet cute to some degree.

Anyways, I used my photo to reference him and created the setting he is in from my mind using some local birch trees for reference. I like to use reference photos for the animals I draw to make sure they are porportionally accurate and as I also like to draw detail having a photo to work from helps.

I started by drawing a basic outline in pencil, with some more intricate pencil work on critical areas like the eyes and face area. Once I am happy with the basic lines I immediately start to draw with ink. I usually don't go back and pencil more, I just work straight form my inking pens. This can be a real challenge as there is no un-doing anything once the ink hits the paper. I used a combination of tools to draw with, but the main items are: Rotring Pens, Pigma Pens and some painted ink useing brushes. The original drawing is approximately 16x20 inches in size and drawn on heavy 300gsm watercolor paper.

Once the drawing is complete, we scan it at 800 dpi and process the scan to reflect the original as much as possible. We make a limited edition number of prints to sell. The small image size here really doesn't do the original justice, but its a fair representation.

Robert J Andersen

DETAIL IMAGE 1:

DETAIL IMAGE 2:

FINAL FULL DRAWING:

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