So I am back at Blarney Books and Art in Port Fairy come April, and have chosen to do illustrations from selected works by Alan Garner. I have only just discovered Garner's works last year with his last novel 'Treacle Walker', and have been ploughing my way through his cannon of delightfully fantastical works.
This work is a Palug from the book 'The Moon of Gomrath'. Palug are based on the legends of the Welsh wild cats. Mean and angry, they claw their way through the story.
Reference material was from a variety of sources; A crouching/slinking tiger, snarling tabby cat face, slinking house cat, Welsh wild cat images for fur color, etc, all melded together into a single beastie. I tried to make him as nasty as possible, exagerating things like the claws, length of tail and body, size of teeth and such.
I have used a Lana Hot Press 300gsm paper which has a smooth but soft surface as I started with some very light Graphitint washes in Indigo and Chestnut pencils. Over the top of this base layer of light tone is dry drawing in 2H, HB, F, 2B, 4B and gold ochre & blue pencils (all Staedtler). In this work I did not include much background, unlike the other works in the series, because I decided I just wanted scratch lines to indicate the cat tearing at the drawing paper.
This is the 8th work in the series of what will be 10 drawings and 4 masks.
Note that this is a phone image so has some lighting and color issues. you lot are the first to see it!
