This is my artistic rendition of the drawing ‘Summer’ by artist Tom Fleming.
I used only an HB graphic pencil and two erasers for this piece.
WHY I CHOSE THIS PIECE
I was required to recreate a drawing for my Illustration class at Des Moines Area Community College. We were told to pick a drawing from this huge pile of books that our teacher had brought in for us. I just happened to stumble across the book How to draw: Fantasy Females which had a ton of very creative drawings that were almost too real to believe. The amount of detail that went into this work was something that I hadn’t exactly done before with my own work. So I figured this would be a great place to start and help improve my drawing abilities.
Tom Fleming has had multiple Chelsey award nominations
After pondering through the book, I had realized that the artist (Tom Fleming) had been nominated for numerous Chelsey awards, and one of those nominations was for this piece as well. Though he didn’t win the Chelsey award in 2007 for this piece, having multiples of your works nominated is more than a blessing. This is why I decided to recreate this piece for a month-long pencil drawing project.
As you can see on the left is when I was just about halfway through drawing the picture. On the right is the reference image I copied from, and I used a piece of paper with a 1-inch square cut out of it so that I could pinpoint my focus on each square of the actual image. This practice of drawing from a grid is very time consuming and daunting.
It started off difficult then became increasingly easier the more I drew. I’m very proud to have completed this artistic rendition and I will be purchasing more artwork by Tom Fleming. Please check his work out and you will be impressed.
