ARTWRK027 - Titled "BULL AMONGST THE BIRCHES"

The Story of the Drawing:

This guy was so cute, when I started calling he came right in to where we were standing, just a few feet from where my wife was. We snapped several high qiality photos of him before he camly walked back in to the woods where he came from. This all happened in our favorite moosing area, a place behind Berlin NH called Success Pond.

I composed the image from the original photo of the moose and several reference photos I took of our local birch trees along the river in Littleton where we live. I like this drawing a lot because it represents the ideal scenario I would like to see a moose in the wild in. I also like the depth the trees in fron and behing the central subject create. It was difficult for me because I wanted it to look as realistic as possible, I actually went out and took reference photos of groups of trees with me standing in them to be sure I had my composition right.

I draw from reference photos because I want my animals to look proportionally correct, I hate it when you look at a piece of artwork or drawing and know in your heart something is wrong with it. The mind is very sharp and knows when things don't look right.

I start by drawing a basic outline in pencil, with some more intricate pencil work on critical areas like the eyes and face area and the feet. 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:

Bull Moose Pen and Ink Drawing Detail

DETAIL IMAGE 2:

Birch Trees Ink Drawing Detail

FINAL FULL DRAWING:

Bull Moose in Birch Trees Pen and Ink

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