You may recognise this image from day 94. I love the pose and movement of this horse and rider so much that I was itching to use it again. This time I wanted to create an A3 ink and mixed media drawing. 

Here I'm using black Quink Ink, a spray water bottle, charcoal, pastel and an eraser for mark making. I've drawn it onto Seawhite acrylic paper which is thicker than regular cartridge paper and can withstand water and a little heavy-handedness which is great if you're using mixed media and experimenting. I'm really enjoying working with mixed media. I love to use all kinds of materials so being able to use them altogether is a HUGE bonus 🤩. 

I'm really pleased with the way that the horse and rider sit alongside each other and the proportions are fairly accurate although there are a few areas of both that if I were to do it again would need rectifying. For me, the horses front legs need to start lower down and its chest area needs to be longer. At the moment it doesn't show the power of the horse as there is no muscle definition to hint at its strength. The positioning of the boy I'm happy with but again there is no solidity to his body to show the struggle of them both exiting from the water. His forearm is also too short and his lower leg far too thin.

In hindsight I would've liked to have toned down and softened the horses legs and belly to further convey the water being splashed around and for the horse to gradually blend into the bottom half of the drawing. Once I apply the charcoal it's very hard to bring back the white of the paper if I'm wanting to change something back to a lighter tone. Even adding white pastel over the top doesn't achieve the desired effect and just turns everything grey. I find white acrylic helps rectify mistakes over charcoal but you do have to apply quite a few coats before you can work into it again as that will just turn grey too.

My lesson learned today is to make sure I regularly stand back to assess my work before adding any darker darks. Once I go past the point of no return it's very hard to bring it back again.