Studio process for “Outpost”

Here are some photographs of the drawing “Outpost” in process.

First I set up a small model of a driftwood fort in a sandbox I constructed in my studio.

Then I drew the outline of the structure on paper and filled in the wood areas with a light wash of gauche.

Using charcoal and pastel pencils I begin to flesh out the color and texture of the structure.

To go from this…

To this.

You can see the shadows of the easel and the sandbox to the left of it in the last photo. I’ve got my ipod in there playing books on tape during most of the process. For this drawing I listened to “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer” and the first parts of “The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire”. Time really flies by in here. Four or five hours into the work it feels like I’ve just sat down.