Post Intro
These drawings were demos for a class exercise. The subject was a hunter and a chance encounter with an Alaskan brown bear on a hard scrabble beach. Four different compositions are shown along with the supporting sketches.
Sketch 1
A full page of bear gestures. I studied some photos and then put them away and tried to remember its most important characteristics. This keeps your sketches fresher.
Sketch 2
The next step was developing four compositions with little detail. Most are views from near the hunter, but one takes us out near the bear for a fresh viewpoint.
Sketch 3
A series of studies to get the hunter a bit more developed.
Sketch 4
I cleaned up the composition sketches with all the elements in place and a little nicer drawing.
Sketch 5
This is the final developed composition of the encounter. There is very real eye contact between the adversaries here!
Robert Watts 