The Dead Walk! is a drawing I completed in 2008. This is one of my more basic drawings. it's a drawing of a zombie and the title obviously indicates that. There isn't much else to say when explaining what the drawing is all about. It only took me about 2 weeks to do this, but probably could have been done in a day if I had to do it within a certain time restriction. However, I actually spent a long time doing some research prior to starting this drawing. I'm a huge fan of zombie media. I read books, play videogames, and watch movies that are all about zombies, but surprisingly, I never used zombies in any of my artwork prior to this. For the first time, I had to study the zombie in order to create this piece. This piece was also an excuse for me to get back into using charcoal again.

The first thing I had to do when working on this piece was to work within the restrictions I had. Prior to making this a zombie drawing, it was supposed to be something else, and the cutout and the black inked outlining on the end was already there. During my research, I looked at various zombies poses for references. I ultimately decided to go with drawing just a head and an upper body. After I had some basic proportions in place, I started drawing with mostly light colored charcoal. Darker charcoal was added later and then after that, it was mostly a balancing act using really dark charcoal and white charcoal. Surprisingly enough, some of the proportions went through some changes late in the project's development. This included, the chin, the teeth, and the ear. After the drawing was done, it was sprayed over with gloss fixative, which made the dark charcoal stand out more. The inking on the edges was also redone.

I always tell people that I was 80% satisfied with this drawing. In fact, when I think about this drawing I end up looking at my satisfaction of this piece in terms of percentages. About 50% of the satisfaction goes towards every aspect of the zombie starting at the middle of his head and then going down. I love the way I drew the mouth area, although only a few people at first thought his mouth looked very funky until they realized that flesh was missing from one side of his mouth. The way that is drawn along with the neck and shoulder area looks so beautiful to me. That's a prime example of why I wanted to start using charcoal again. Then 20% of my satisfaction would go toward the gloss fixative. I thought at first it could ruin this piece, but it ended up making it look 10 times better. I almost looks like you're looking at a page out of an art magazine. 5% of my satisfaction would go towards the background. It's not much of anything, yet it works. It makes the zombie stand out. It's bland, but it's doing it's job by being bland. My final 5% would towards the overall presentation. Like I said, this was a straight forward drawing. I wanted to create a zombie and I feel this looks like a zombie. Almost everyone who has seen this piece has identified it as a zombie. Even though part of the zombie is cut out of the piece, the pose and everything still works. The 20% of dissatisfaction I get from this piece comes from every part of the zombie above the center of his head. First of all, I don't mind that the eyes are a little big. In fact, I wanted them that way, but I also wish I could have had them big yet also create the illusion that they're even more sunken in. also, his forehead looks a little flat to me. If I could have done as well on the forehead as I did on the mouth area, and have it a little lighter than the mouth are at the same time, then this drawing would have been nearly perfect. Still, for the most part I'm proud of the work I did on this piece.