Merry Krampus!

THE KRAMPUS

'Tis the Season for drawings of Santa's Little Helper, the Krampus.  Originally, I was going to a tripped out version, with his tongue out and all crazy.  But, I thought it would be more amusing to do a version of the Krampus as if he was just walked into the K-Mart Photo Center to have a portrait done.  I know, I'm a little off model for the Krampus--not nearly hairy enough and I kept his tongue in his mouth for the picture.  I figured it was funnier to have him seem like a middle-aged demon, balding, slight paunch, but just plugging away at his job.  :-)  I may have to do a corrected version of him in the near future.

Here is the process, for those of you interested...

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STEP ONE:  I blocked everything in using vine charcoal on gray bogus paper (it's a step up from newsprint, but has more of a "tooth", which is really good for charcoal and such).  I didn't bother with a reference picture this time, as I had done quite a bit of figure/portrait drawing this week, so I thought I could handle it without this time.  :-)

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STEP TWO:  I then smear it into a soft, blurry mess... Just to give an idea of where the shadows would fall and the light source, etc.

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STEP THREE:  I begin to work on building up highlights by erasing out charcoal with a kneaded eraser and darken the shadows with a charcoal pencil and carbon pencil.

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STEP FOUR:  More of the same.  I also add in some white chalk as an extra highlight.  The gray background is a good middle-tone--it's like getting three values for the price of two (dark, middle, light), rather than just the white and black of charcoal on white paper. 

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STEP FIVE:  Here is the finished charcoal drawing.

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STEP SIX:  I then scanned the drawing into PhotoShop and used a mix of the MULTIPLY Layer and standard layers to colorize it and do some minor painting.  

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Done with charcoal, carbon pencil, and white chalk on 9" x 12" gray bogus paper, and then colorized in PhotoShop.

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