ARTWRK033 - Titled "FREE RIDE"

The Story of the Drawing:

This loon was referenced from a photo I took of our local loons in 2012 here in Littleton NH. I had been following these loons for a while and at times they are photographic. It was a good year for the loons and they had two happy healthy chicks. I have always wanted to draw loons but had a hard time trying to figure out how to represent the heads with ink. The heads on a loon are like a flat black look and it would not look artistically good just to paint black ink in the heads, I needed a more accurate way to represent the shades and minute hair lines. I decide to stipple the heads, which is a technique where you use dots to create an image, lots of dots by the way. I feel the final drawing accurately represents the loons in an original and accurate way.

I drew it using a combination of the following tools, Rotring Isograph pens, Pigma Micron pens, Drawing Ink, inking with paint brushes.

This drawing is one of my more complex ones as it combines stipple drawing with traditional inking. Also the chicks were a challenge as I wanted them to have a slightly different color look than the main loon, but still only using black ink. The stipple of the loon head and also within the chicks just take a long time to do as they are created dot by dot. There are several layers of inking in the chicks to give them that different color look even though it is all done with the same black ink. The final drawing is approximately 16x20 inches in size and looks awesome.

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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