This pastel drawing of a rockhopper penguin was completed in December 2020, following the end of the second national lockdown in the UK.
As we ended the second national lockdown and in the full swing of winter, I thought it was best to pass the time of a weekend afternoon by getting out the sketch pad and having a go at drawing a rockhopper penguin.
The first stage of the drawing was to pencil the penguin itself onto the paper and also the rocky shoreside which you can see featured on the right-hand side of the artwork. From there it was a matter of applying a soft pastel pale blue for the sky, joining on the horizon about halfway down the page with a dark rich blue sea. From there the context of the penguin was built up including the black head and black-edged flippers. The main body section of the penguin was done with white chalk pastel and then blended with a peach colour that was in the palette to create an off white colour for the penguin’s body. The peach looking, blended with pink, feet were then filled in and the rocky shore was also coloured to show a boulder-style shore.
The rockhopper penguin has infamous long yellow eyebrows which are very distinct from the breed of penguin. The infamous eyebrows have been styled on this piece too. The rockhopper penguin also has bright red eyes – which can look to be cursing on the natural bird but are completely normal for the breed. The bright red eyes have also been added to the piece.
The final touches to the piece were to outline the penguin with black chalk pastel to add boldness to the overall piece.
At the time of writing this post, I can’t remember how long it took me to complete but it passed the weekend afternoon over – which was what the aim was!
This blog post is available in audio as a podcast and can be found here: Rocky, the rockhopper audio
Artwork in Progress 