So was originally going to try a completely different challenge that I think would be fun, but at the same time annoying to try and do without a lot of prep. But the day prior decided to change my mind and just do a "whatever" drawing where I can just draw for a while. After thinking on it for a while went with trying a black and white drawing and ended up choosing to go with a Ninetales drawing using the chiaroscuro type shading method.


And in the grand scheme of things, yeah, this ended up taking a while to do. Overall took me about 12 hours to draw, making it one of my longer drawings. And in some regards the means that I was doing it makes it feel not as crisp of an image as some with far less time. Mostly because everything was done with a 0% hardness brush past the sketch phase. And not only that only 10-30% opacity. So very soft, very light brush strokes, giving the image an almost charcoal/conte crayon type effect that I really like, though it did take a while. For reference, the sketch, the head and the body took a total 5 hours to do. The tails, even with a longer fade and a higher opacity (the head/body was 10%, the tails had twice as long of strokes and 30% opacity stroke) still took me 7 hours to do. Somewhat interesting thing of note is that other than the background, everything was done in either completely black or completely white strokes. I did not use any other shade while drawing.


In the end, though, I really like the effect. I think the fact I spent far more time shading really shows and I really like how it came out. But at the same time there are drawings I've done this year that I still like more. Though as a final aside, I gotta say that after spending 5 hours straight looking at a black and white image, then turning to look at something else which had tons of vibrant colors, kind of takes a moment to get used to, almost felt blinded for a moment.