Drawing 2014: Harley-Davidson

Another Christmas, another commissioned drawing:

USPS informs me that this was delivered today, and so (since I doubt my brother has ever visited my web sites anyway) I think it’s safe to post it here.

I think it’s okay. Unlike last year’s drawing, this was much more a direct rendering from a source photo. I did have to convert from color to black and white (which I might have done in Photoshop, but I didn’t), and I also added the clouds. The sky was basically an overcast blank in the original photo, and it felt like very awkwardly trapped white space between the bridge tower and the tall tree.

Otherwise, I think the original composition was pretty good for an amateur snapshot. As is common in amateur photography, though, the light was behind the subject, so a lot of bike detail was just lost in shadow. Frankly, I just decided to declare this okay, and roll with it. Unfortunately graphite pencils are not ideal for large, solid black areas; try as I might I was unable to eliminate some degree of reflective texture, as evident above. Oh well. Ink might have been better in theory, e.g., but in practice I just don’t have a lot of skill or comfort with wet media.

I also did not especially love drawing all of that foliage in the background, let alone stippling the road texture, for what that’s worth. I think the road at least does look nice, but stippling has not gotten any more fun since the last time I did it. 🙂