This is a photorealistic pencil drawing I did of the Colorado River in Glen Canyon Arizona. The drawing is based on a photograph I took in 2011 when I went on a big 5 week long adventure from Palm Bay, Florida throughout the southwest.
This drawing took a total of 325 hours to complete. It measures 17 x 11 inches and was drawn on Strathmore Bristol paper. The work represents 2.5 months of continuous drawing, 5 hours a day 7 days a week. I did take a 10 day break over the Christmas holidays when I was working on it from November of 2o21, to February of 2022.
The reason I undertook such a challenging project is that I wanted to see what I was made of as an artist. I wanted to do something so difficult for me that I would either finish it, or go crazy in the process.
And there were many challenges along the way. One of them was just being able to focus for several hours at time when sometimes it would take 3 to 4 hours to only complete 4 or 5 square inches of the drawing. Another challenge, and probably the biggest one was that once I completed drawing the sky and mountains, I figured out that I had no idea how to draw the water.
I had never really drawn water like you see in this picture and had to spend 2 weeks doing studies just to figure out how to get that water texture right and to my satisfaction.
The original drawing is for sale at Fine Art America and comes already framed. The price is $4,750 for the original and there are also prints available as well. You can contact me via Fine Art America if you are interested in the original. If you would like prints on anything from fine art paper, to canvas, to aluminum, you can just order through that website.