David Petersen's Blog: The Red Bullrat

Last Friday on my Twitch Stream, we did the tenth community draw-along event #DrawTheExtinct where I posted an image from an old block print I made with a few animal photo inspiration prompts and the idea to create an imaginary extinct animal. I worked on my piece live on my Twitch stream while viewers worked at home and then on Monday we shared our finished pieces.

Here is my finished Red Bullrat. And below are my steps to create it as well as the community submissions.

We started with the prompts of my original 2000's era linocut print titled 'Extinct' as well as a Bull Terrier, a Muskrat, and a Red Panda.

I told the viewers that they could use any combination of the inspiration prompts––they could make their version as cute and cuddly as a pocket pet stray kitten, as monstrous and deadly as a giant kaiju destroying cities, or anything in between. I also wanted this to be an excuse to get their pencils moving. I invited all skill levels, because I'm a firm believer that you shouldn't have to be good at something or pursuing mastery of it to just simply enjoy the act of it...and art is no exception.

On the Friday stream I started drawing with mechanical pencil on a sheet of copy paper to try and reimagine the beast. Proportion-wise I went with a Muskrat body & legs, Bull Terrier head, and Red Panda tail and markings. I wanted him holding something, so I added a clam to his paws. To the left you can see my finished pencils scanned into Photoshop with minor adjustments made & tinted to easily see the breaks in forms.

After I was happy enough with my above design, I printed that piece out on copy paper and taped it to the back of a sheet of Strathmore 300 series bristol. Using a lightpad, I was able to see through the surface of the bristol as I inked the Red Bullrat. I used a Copic Multiliner 0.7 SP pen to ink the art. Most of the work was in building up that repetitive fur texture. I worried I wasn't going to be able to finish the drawing by the end of the stream, but somehow I pulled it off just in the nick of time and signed off of Twitch and wished everyone luck with their pieces..

After the stream ended (and I had a break for dinner) I scanned the inks Friday was Julia's Birthday, so I didn't spend more time of the piece until Saturday night when I flatted the colors. I went with the Red Panda palate for the creature. I added only one color hold (areas where I want the ink to be a color other than black) to the water dripping out of the clam.

For these Draw The Extinct pieces I have a template with background and border already established, so it makes some of this color prep work all the easier. And on Sunday evening, I used the dodge and burn tools (with a stock photoshop texture brush) to render the piece.

Below you can again see the final rendered colors with a border and type applied in this final version.

But, as this is a community event, I wanted to share all the other entries posted in the Discord. I awarded a prize and we voted together on a few more (prize winners marked with *) on Monday's Twitch stream and we all enjoyed seeing what each other had done. I hope we get even more participants next month
(First Friday!)