Raining Cats and Dogs

I decided to brave the grey, dreary Yorkshire weather to go outside photograph my new cat painting. The minute I stepped out of the door it started raining, and the dogs who had been following me decided it was not such a good idea and retreated back inside. Juno and Rio watched progress with a great deal of interest from inside the conservatory.

Unfortunately the light was about as dismal as the rain, so the colours on the painting are not quite right. I expect however I will get some good light at some stage, I could have used my state of the art flash, but Bryan sat on it and killed it completely.So, this is the new one, it is huge for me, 24 x 20 inches on drafting film. I have airbrushed the background which will need much more work, it is just to give me an idea of colours.

I have started working the fur in coloured pencil.

To be continued.

Spots before the Eyes

I have been busy drawing out my new cat, which has been very time consuming, so I decided to do another dog study with Derwent drawing pencils. This time I chose a Dalmatian from my reference photographs.
It is approximately 9 x 7 inches on a bluey/grey Mi-Tientes pastel paper. I airbrushed a little acrylic to finish him off.
Please note this went through a horrible stage in the middle, but hopefully it ended up OK.
In these studies I am trying to give them a more 'immediate' look, concentrating on expression and structure rather than my more usual 'every hair drawn' finish. It is teaching me to only include what is important to the finished work, so I'm hoping this carries through into my more detailed work, time will tell.

colored pencil
Dalmatian
Derwent pencils

From first marks to giclee print

I took three of my images to the printer yesterday, one of them being my latest grey cat which now bears the title:- 'Out of Sight'.

I thought you might like to see its development. I used Prismacolor French Grey coloured pencils in Frech Grey, 10%, 20%, 30%, 50%, 70%, 90% and Black. It is on Arches watercolour paper and is approximately 14 x 10 inches.

This is the finished original.

The print is shown below, it will be part of my work displayed at the Spring Fair that is held at the National Exhibition Centre at the beginning of February. The Spring Fair is one of the largest trade fairs held in the UK and it attracts a huge International audience, so hopefully it will be popular.

If you are interested in the Spring fair I have included the link below.

http://www.springfair.com/
art
cat art
colored pencil
Spring Fair

Whippet Sketch

I have not a lot of stamina at the moment after my hospital visit, and even less patience. So I decided to have a break from the grey cat and work on a sketch.

My usual style of working as you have probably realised, is highly detailed with many layers. To avoid producing a hybrid of loose and detailed,I decided to work with Derwent Drawing pencils. These are really creamy, come in 24 natural colours and have a really thick lead.

Derwent say 'the creamy, extra wide strip encourage loose, expressive tonal drawings'

I had a look through my reference photographs and selected a young Whippet as he had the short coat and beautiful bone structure i was looking for.

I set myself the challange of producing a sketch with character, you can judge if I succeeded. The one thing I would stress, is that I would never, ever, do the eyes loose, they are the soul of the portrait to me.

I intend to offer open edition giclee prints of this one in the near future.

New Beginnings

Hopefully both Rio and myself have finished with hospitals, of both the human and animal variety for the foreseeable future.

We had a wonderful time in Scotland, here are a few photo's of the gang on the beach at Dornoch and one of the early morning sunlight on the snow.

Holiday over, back to the artwork in my next post.