Building a Prairie Dog family

I was wanting to explore a different subject matter after I had completed my second Buffalo drawing. I was intending to do a drawing of an elk, but every shot I took in Yellowstone had a tourist trying to get trampled by getting a bit too close, and in my way. I did get some great shots of elk sitting on the lawn of the town’s fire station. I will likely get working on that soon. These photos are all commercially printed many years ago, so I will scan them eventually.

In the group of images, I found a number of shots that I took while sitting in the parking lot of a Bank of America in Boulder, Colorado. A family of Prairie Dogs occupied the field next door. I sat in my car shooting photos of just one critter at a time. Making a composite image can be a problem when you have just a single subject in any image. I looked for group images and found a few that suggested a direction to go. I did my original sketches on 14” x 11” bond paper from a sketch pad to make it easy to transfer if I did something I liked. I penciled in a few tries and then settled on a final. I transferred the simple sketch to heavy Bristol board with light pencil.

Using my pics, I did a detailed pencil drawing using a variety of photographs of what I assume was just one, very active Prairie Dog who would pop-up, look around and then disappear again. I concentrated on getting a good study of his/her/their coats, eyes and paws (hands).

I started the ink drawing by doing the eyes and then facial details. Worked on the hands and then progressed to render each animal to complete the drawing. I went with a minimalist background environment.

I used the mixed-line drawing technique that allows me to closely match the texture and flow of my subject’s fur or hair. I typically work on the face first to start working from the focal point out. On this piece, after working on the eyes and hands, I generally worked from top to bottom. Then, I worked front to back.

This is such a fun piece, but I see things I want to improve. 

But, isn’t that always the case…