I started this sketch wanting to draw a red panda. I found myself in Taiwan over the Christmas holiday where my wife and I visited one of the largest zoo’s in all of Asia, the Tai Pei Zoo. There I saw and fell in love with Pandas, and red pandas. After we got back from our trip I set off to draw/sketch a setting where both were involved. This is one of those practice pieces that eventually became something more. Here is how it all started:

Often times when sketching the first draft you find things that don’t fit in the picture. In the top right you’ll see a creature, that is half monkey and half koala. I decided not to add it to the digital version of the sketch and deleted it entirely. Lets just say it wasn’t my finest work. However, that is the importance of sketching something out before you begin as It helps the vision of the piece. It’s all apart of the process.

My recent practice has brought me to a place of worry and stress about what to do with the background. I can set up the focus of the piece nicely, but how to add the background is something I’ve needed practice with. I wanted to put our focus in the woods with the sun shinning through the tree limbs. If I wasn’t careful this could take away from the piece entirely. I even deleted several different layers as the background became quite a challenge for me. Here are a few images of what I decided on.

What I learned with this was that too much detail can take away from the actual focal point of the piece. I am a person who doesn’t mind spending time on details, no matter how big or small those details need to be (check the fur of the animals). THIS can be a HUGE time sync. Its worth stating that with a background I need to lessen the detail and make it more simple.

Here is the piece in its finished state. About half way into the image I realized how much this reminded me of the South Park episode “Woodland Critter Christmas. (Season 8, episode 4)” This show obviously crept into my subconscious (since we watch the series every night to fall asleep too) and what started off as a simple panda piece turned into something entirely different. Now, did the background add to the piece or take away from it? Thoughts? comments? Please let me know.