Water, Water Everywhere

Van Gogh had to be put on hold over the weekend as we had a flood.

A pipe in the cupboard where I keep the dog towels, dog bedding etc decided to explode. Now you probably think this is an exageration, but if I tell you my eldest son was soaked to the skin in about 60 seconds as he tried to stop the deluge will give you an idea of the force of the water.

Of course my husband was out and I couldn't turn the water off. In the time it took for me and Rob to change places, the water was coming through the ceiling, gushing from the light fittings and running down the walls.

To make matters worse I had been in the middle of making a chicken curry for lunch, and never ones to miss an opportunity the pups managed to eat the vegetable skins and half the raw chicken.

Saska and Clinton were horrified at this disruption to their morning and retreated from the chaos to the peace of our bedroom. The other four took up vantage points and helped us, by tripping people up, getting into the water etc.

I think they rather like the idea of having a permanent waterfall in the cupboard.

Drying things out is taking considerably longer than wetting them did, but at least the pups had no side effects from their rather unusual lunch.

I did continue with my kitten, I have darkened the background to make him stand out more but much more work is needed on it yet.

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.