Rhino Drawing

I have seen so much lately on what’s going on with our environment and wildlife that I am having a hard time understanding the onslaught on all our natural resources. Does no one understand that every thing on this planet must work together, not destroy. Sometimes I feel like just getting off grid and leaving society behind…

I’d been working on some small doodles for a few days and trying to avoid the news & I suddenly got this urge do a large drawing. I usually stick to smaller sizes, not sure why but I really felt like I needed to do a large format piece. As I don’t really have any large pieces of paper around except some large pastel and watercolour paper I decided to use one of them. So I chose a grey watercolour paper

The image of the Rhino is one that really spoke to me. I had taken some photos last year at wildlife parks the expression is always one of sadness or maybe that’s just how I feel when I see them.

At first I started with pencils/graphite to block in my image and the plan was to use them throughout. But they just didn’t work on this paper. I started working more areas in the charcoal. I rarely use charcoal but I was loving this. The face on this giant beast is so sweet, the intelligence in its eyes.

It took me a couple of weeks with all of those wrinkles but I was very happy with the results. Not sure what I will do with image, I have gone back and forth between donating it but there isn’t much around here for that and trying to sell it to donate the money to some wildlife program. I am sure it will come to me.