Originally I drew this wolf skeleton in my art journal while I was at Starbucks. A lot of people liked it so I decided to turn it into one of my projects. I traced over the lines with ink and then used two tones of ink wash for the rest of it. The first was used for all of the skeleton and the second was used for the shadows.
For the paper I used plain white paper and then I stained it with coffee and let it soak in to get that old paper effect. Tea is also apparently good for this. I sprinkled salt in some places also for the watermarks. The salt soaks up the water and leaves "normal" paper spots. I set it out and let it air dry for awhile; I haven't tried it with a hair drier yet so I don't know how that does. The paper got pretty stiff and didn't smell very good after it dried.
After I cut it down to a more reasonable size for the drawing I burnt the edges around the picture with a lighter and one hole in the middle that really wasn't supposed to be that big. I just couldn't get it to go out all the way, but it stopped before the foot was burned. You should probably test the burning on another piece of paper to get the hang of it. Also it smells absolutely horrible so you may want to do this outside and keep in mind the ashes that come from burning it.
After I was done I just glued it to black paper for a background and also to give it more support. Everything I did to the paper ended up making it seem weaker.
This was my second still life for the second nine weeks. It's of a calligraphy pen and ink well sitting on a piece of paper that has writing on it. The writing is a part of "A Dream Within a Dream" by Edgar Allen Poe. I drew every thing on a larger piece of paper first and then after wards i cut a straight line across the side and the top avoiding the items that stuck outside of the boundaries. Then, I went back and cut the shape of the items out so it looks like its coming of the paper. I got the idea to do this from something I did to my last still life.
The two pictures below are of the first still life I did. I decided to cut out the collar then cut the straight line across and the insides of the collar. After I was done I thought it looked so cool so I put a note in my book to try it later on purpose this time.
I used normal scissors but an Exact o blade would be great for this. The most important thing is to get as close as possible with out cutting off parts of your art. If you like this idea you may want to look up the art of Ramon Bruin.
