Walter the rabbit

And a little bit of "process"

I finally named this rabbit I’ve been drawing lately, his name is Walter.

Walter’s four cats waiting for him outside the cafe

I was looking for a name that wasn’t too twee, because let’s be honest this little rabbit is already pretty twee. So this is Walter, he lives with four cats in a little house at the top of a hill.

It might be hard to see but tiny Walter is sitting with a cat at the top

I posted most of these drawings in Notes this week so if you are very active in Notes and have seen most of these already - sorry!

I follow a similar process each time I do one of these quick-ish little pictures: I come up with an idea and do some sketches until I am satisfied. I keep my sketches very simple so that there will still be some spontaneity in the final drawing, here is the final (grubby) sketch for the drawing of the hilltop:

I open a bunch of tabs on my laptop with different reference photos to refer to, I tape the sketch to a clean piece of drawing paper, clip it to my lightbox and then…I procrastinate. I pace around the house, wash dishes, fuss with the laundry, whatever I can do to put off actually sitting down to draw the final. Each time I’m anxious that once I start I will discover my drawing skills have suddenly failed me. Finally I can’t put it off any more, I sit down and start drawing…and most of the time it works out fine. To my astonishment I am satisfied - or occasionally delighted - by what I’ve drawn. But once I’ve finished a drawing I seem to lose my connection with it, I look at it and think wait how did I do that? Wash, rinse, repeat.

I am continuing to love this extra soft pencil, 5B appears to be the sweet spot. I ordered a set of Mitsubishi Uni-Hi 5B pencils from Jetpens, just waiting for them to arrive. Until next time!