Hi everyone! 😊

I come back today with a little drawing project. I wanted to make a connection between the animal eye and the human one. Especially, the pet's eye. Because we always say that our pet is a part of our family. And so, in that sense, our pet is a bit like of a reflection of us, through the way we look at them.
Secondly, I wanted to point out the richness of the differences, which in the end bring us closer to one another. Pets can also have peculiarities, and perhaps the same as us, even if they are different species. Heterochromia is an example of a peculiarity that both a dog and a human can have.

So these are all the things that inspired me to make this drawing. It's a thing between the realistic and the symbolic.

Process

In terms of technique, I decided to draw a face in greyscale, with only the eyes coloured to highlight them.

At first, I wanted to do this on a dark paper.
But, as I wanted to represent an Australian Shepherd (a breed that often has heterochromia), it wasn't relevant to use that paper as they have a rather light coat. Also, I should have done the eyes in pastel when I wanted to do them in watercolour. (incompatible with black paper) (incompatible with black paper)

So I decided to do this drawing on a white multi-technique paper. This means that I could both draw in pencil and have a watercolour layer on top.
It is nice for experimenting and testing to modulate and mix different techniques, but as it is okay for all techniques, it is not perfect for any. The pencil did not blend well with the paper, and the pose of the watercolour was okay, but not as well adapted.

I started the drawing with the pencil layer. I put the main values on the paper. At first, I wanted to do only the iris with watercolor, only the colored part, so.
But since the paper wasn't that good, the pencil doesn't look pigmented enough and the darker values look really dull.

So I did the rest of the drawing in watercolour. And it gives a cooler result than just using pencil.

When the dog part was finished, I started the human eye part.

I worked in the same way. But because I was concentrating on the grey tones, I forgot not to paint the eyes in black and white 😬

So I had to paint in colours with an already existing black and white layer.
This is the reason why the human eye looks duller than the dog's, because it is more difficult to apply colour to a grey layer, because it will blend with the previous layer.

The last part was to apply some white paint to represent the light reflections on the eyes. For this I used gouache instead of watercolour, because the second one wasn't pigmented enough.

Here is the final result.

I liked doing this drawing, it changes of the things I used to do, and I was able to take two different techniques in hand, and mix them to get their advantages, but also to learn from their disadvantages.

I hope you liked it 😊

See you soon for more creations !