ARTWRK030 - Titled "THE GUARDIAN"

The Story of the Drawing:

This is a wonderful drawing and it was referenced from and equally wonderful photo. We have dreamed of going to Alaska for many years and every time we tried it never ending up happening. In 2010 I decided it was time for us to finally go and we had everything set up, then we cancelled, then we re-booked and it became final. The image this drawing came from was taken in Hallo Bay Alaska and it truely was an experience of a lifetime. We followed this family of bears for several hours and snapped some wonderful mum to baby interaction.

They call these bears coastal bears, but they are every bit grizzly bears in size, shape, behavior and history. What was amazing was the bears were non agressive towards the humans following and photographing them.

This drawing was a real challenge, four heads and eight eyes to try and get just right with pen and ink. It is hard enough getting one set right, but I think I got the result I was looking for. I did find that the smaller eyes were hard to do in pen and ink, the ink really wanted to close the whitespace, either that or I just don't see as well as I used to do. We were in Katmai NP when we took this photo and she was just a stunning bear, it was real neat to try and draw her. The drawing in full size looks way better than it does here in the limited size I allow for fear of the internet

I wanted the title to reflect the protective nature of a Grizzly mum with her cubs, I thought the guardian was a powerful choice.

Once the drawing complete I scan the image, then process it to remove the paper texture that shows after being scanned, no other processing is done other than to make it look just like the original.

Robert Andersen

DETAIL IMAGE 1:

DETAIL IMAGE 2:

FINAL FULL DRAWING:

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