Thank you for this interesting thread! I’ve also played around with mixing graphite and other mediums. Watercolour is a classic choice and can give lovely results. I enjoyed mixing graphite with a little pastel (chalk, not oil) because I find that they behave similarly. Some people use coloured penc...

Thank you so much! That’s very kind of you. That background was all done with graphite powder using the methods I shared on your post. It just took a lot of layering and then lifting with Blu Tack for the vegetation.

I love the eerie atmosphere you’ve achieved here and I like the tension created by the bold composition choice of having the branch split the drawing this way! That heart-shaped face is unmistakable!! I have a love-hate relationship with graphite powder. Sometimes it seems like it’s the only solutio...

Yes, that’s exactly the idea! This is the Bateman painting I was remembering: https://www.artcountrycanada.com/bateman-robert-proud-swimmer-snow-goose.htm I think I’ve seen Carl Brenders do that too. I remember reading that Robert Bateman felt that all paintings are essentially landscapes because wi...

Thank you Mike! I remember seeing a Robert Bateman painting a long time ago that broke every rule of composition. There was a single waterfowl on the water all the way to the right of a rectangular canvas. The waterfowl was facing right too. There was just a suggestion of a wake behind the bird on t...

I think I've gone as far as I can on this drawing. I added a little suggestion of vegetation behind the deer and I tweaked the young doe at left.
I'm going to call it done now. Thanks for following along!

Hi Jay. Yes! He seems to fit into his hiding place better now, yet he still stands out because of his lighter colour. He seems more contoured now too, and the eyes look much more natural too.

I still need to do quite a bit more work on this, but this is as far as I've gotten. I've been working on increasing the contrast and starting a suggestion of ground cover. I'm thinking that I should add some suggestion of ground cover on the right behind the does. Please let me know if the deer are...

Yes, he does stand out thanks to that rich black in the background especially near his head. The contrast of various textures in the background versus the bobcat also helps him stand out. There isn’t much suggestion of fur texture on the bobcat, but I think this is just your style of drawing. We can...

I agree with you both! That’s why I hesitated uploading that last WIP, but I thought it may be useful to someone to see that drawings sometimes go through ugly stages. Jay, I’ll work on contrasts now which I hope will push the background back and the deer forward. Mike, I won’t let the deer float aw...