Pencil portrait of a squirrel

Graphite pencil drawing of a squirrel on A4 Daler Rowney Airbrush Bristol board.

Pencils: Mars Lumograph 4B, Faber Castell 9000 (6B, 8B), mechanical pencils 0.2mm/2B, 0.3mm/2B, 0.5mm/4B with Pentel Ain Stein leads.
Indentation:  Royal Langnickel embossing tools.
Blending: Blending stump from Royal Langnickel and paper tissues.
Erasing: WH Smith kneadable eraser, Tombow Mono Zero Ultra-fine eraser and Jakar battery eraser.
Photo adjustment using GIMP: Removal of barrel distortion; Cropping to A4 ratio and removal of perspective distortion; Cropping unfinished edges of drawing; Adjustment of histogram.

I saw a photo of a squirrel in the Daily Telegraph newspaper recently and sought out the photographer.

I thank that photographer, Geert Weggen, for his kind permission to make a drawing from his lovely photograph   Kung fu.  His website is www.hardeko.com/.

Geert Weggen is a Swedish photographer who has built an outdoor studio near his kitchen window.  He uses food to lure squirrels to his props and sets and then takes wonderful photographs of these adorable animals.  I urge you to have a look at his photographs on Flickr, using the link above, but please remember that his photos are Copyright and do not have a Creative Commons licence.

I have entered this drawing in the contest organised by AmBr0  - Contest: Traditional Animals and People Portraits.


I have only once before included an animal in one of my drawings .