Ultra-sketches, part II

In my previous post I introduced the concept of “ultra-sketch” and I recalled how, several years ago, I had to do one such hyper-detailed pencil version of my reconstruction of the Koobi Fora environment for the Altamira museum.
Now here is another piece I did for the same project: an Ice Age landscape in the Cantabrian region with some tipical late Pleistocene species such as woolly mammoth, woolly rhino, reindeer, horse and cave lion, all abundantly depicted in the Cave Art of northern Spain and France.
Once again the painting was so complex that I was in serious danger of not finishing it in time for the exhibition opening, so I was extra careful to make the preliminary sketch as clean and detailed as possible so it could take the place of the finished painting -for some time.
This was a tricky scene to draw because snow is not the most pencil-friendly material, in fact it is mostly defined by the way other elements, such as vegetation or the animals, interact with it and each item has to be painstakingly outlined against the white.

In the finished oil painting I changed the disposition of a few snow patches and shrubs, but otherwise I respected the sketch almost exactly, not least to avoid contradictions with a version that Museum viewers might already become familiar with!

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA