"Hey Kid" - Pygmy Goat ACEO

I started this mini (2.5" x 3.5") color pencil drawing in 2007! The poor little partly-finished goat was pushed aside until last month when I pulled it out to have on hand for the Autumn Art Studios Tour.



I finally finished it earlier this week and am very pleased with the way the color scheme turned out. I wanted to use a bright palette for this one, shifting the real colors of the chocolaty brown and grey goat to reds and oranges. It's all done in Prismacolor color pencil on bristol board (a heavyweight drawing paper). The pencils are back in their storage box, so I can't tell you the actual colors, but I used only two colors for the background (light blue and aqua) and shades of red, orange, magenta and yellow for the goat. The darkest colors are grape (the one color I do remember) and a deep purplish red. I also added some of the aqua color from the background to areas of the goat.





The drawing in progress. You can see my scribbly color notes around the edge of the photo. The colors on the left are quite different from the final drawing. I'm not sure if it's because I didn't bother to color correct this photo, or if I really changed things that much - probably a little bit of both.


The original photo in color


The color photo cropped to ACEO size

I've said it before and I'll say it again, even though I use photos for reference, I rarely ever use them "straight out of the camera". I look for interesting ways to crop them. I just love the goat's lower lip and eyes, so I wanted to zoom in on them. By cropping the image, it appears that he's coming out of the drawing. Much more dynamic than the original photo of a goat standing in a pen. Notice too, that I didn't draw his body on the right side, which also adds action by making it look as though he's just popped up into view.