White-Tailed Deer Buck.

I've rarely had to re-work, re-draw or even purposefully over-draw aspects of any project as much as I have on this one but finally I think I will call it complete.

The white-tailed deer (also known as a Virginia Deer) is native to the Americas, from Canada to Peru. It is a medium to small sized deer that sheds and grows antlers every year. For the record, Bambi was/is a white-tailed deer.  So without further ado,.. here is my version of a White-Tailed Deer Buck.

The following is mostly about the pitfalls of learning and corrections I had to do before arriving at the final result shown above. The tree in the background needed to look realistic but not in focus to give the illusion of depth,.. just like in real life, you need to imagine you see details that are not visually there, your mind simply puts them there from memory.


The Tree.

First full
attempt,
and truly
not too
bad but
still looked
too cartoon
like for my taste.

So my thinking
was to add depth
by layering different
graphites and then
erasing them
strategically.



                                                                                      

                                                                    I think finally this works better,...
                                                                                                                   


The other big challenge for me was the head,.. actually the face,.. rather simple at first sight it was oddly difficult to correctly fit the eyes within the size and shape of the head, as well as the location of the antlers. I had a rough time figuring this out on my own, but with a little honesty from my dearest wife, she involuntarily guided me to a final product I am pleased with.


The Head.








The start is easy
once you have
outlined where the
details are to go,...






 








A critical point for
any face is first and
foremost the placement
of the eyes.
(at least for me)



 

Feeling a little odd
about the face so far
I decided I would try 
one set of antlers to see
if it was a visual balance
or symmetry thing.

I also brought in the
eyes, just slightly. 







  

At this point it would
seem alright but not
entirely visually pleasing.
Something was off but
I could not isolate it.  

So I asked my best critic
and she made the observation
it looked more like a lama
than a deer.




 

Figures she was right,
(like she most often is)
so I thinned the shape
of the face and the neck
as well as rounded the ears 
and,... 

not
quite
yet,....


 






... finally dropped the eyes,
tweaked the nose and rounded
out the cheeks,...


Voila!


This I like better.
(I feel I am looking at a deer now)








All in all, I enjoyed this project. The coat of thin lite winter fur was interesting to try and duplicate and I obviously took some heavy artistic liberties but in a sense in works I believe since it gives a sense of direction. Hope you all enjoyed my challenges and agree with the final product.

Drawn on 11 x 14 on 70lb paper (since I knew there would be few very dark areas) using an HB, a 0.7mm mechanical pencil and very little of a 6B graphite pencil (for the eyes and nose) , a kneading and hard eraser as well as various methods to attempt to make snow (not as successfully as I would have liked but you live and learn).

....