Graphite Chipmunk Finished

I could do a bit more with the foliage but I have done enough to decide I do like using the cold pressed paper. I need to move on to finishing some pieces I want to enter into competitions over the next few months.

More Graphite on Cold Pressed Paper

To bid click here

I finished the meerkats but remained undecided about the cold pressed paper. I decided to try a bigger image and see how I felt once I had something bigger to evaluate.

This chipmunk image is approximately 10 x 8 on the Fabriano cold pressed paper

Original reference image of the chipmunk is courtesy Alan D. Wilson, Naturespicsonline.com, used with Alan's permission.

Patchings Art Festival 2010

I worked on the Cavalier King Charles Spaniel during my four days exhibiting at the Patchings Art Festival. She is approximately 12 x 10 on Fabriano Artistico Hot Press Watercolour paper in extra white.
My friends Katherine (Making a Mark) and Vivien (Paintings, Prints and Stuff) have each done a review of their impression as visitors to Patchings. Click the links to read what they thought.

I was there as a first time exhibitor and returned home after 5 days, tired, but glad I took part.

I met some old friends and made some new ones, and feel I helped some beginners to coloured pencils get started.

During the first two days a lot of the visitors belonged to art societies and had travelled by coach to the event. Many of these people were attending the workshops, stocking up on their art supplies and watching the artist exhibitors demonstrate. For next year I aim to have expanded my step by step collection as I felt this was an area I could have developed more. Regular readers to my blog will know that I spent so long printing that I simply ran out of time.

The second two days, Saturday and Sunday, there were less art society visitors and I did better with selling my prints.

Although some of the exhibitors had a very successful show there was widespread feeling that there was less money being spent this year. In the current economic climate that came as no surprise.

It was obvious that Patchings is a very well run Festival which is attended by many hundreds of visitors who come back year after year, I hope to do the same.

From the Photograph to the Paper

I want to do a study of a Snow Leopard in coloured pencil before I continue with my graphite version because I've realised the noses on most of my photographs are twisted (I have no idea why)

In order to correct anatomy, I find the easiest way is to use a grid for the parts I'm not sure about. The rest of the reference I can draw freehand, but using a grid helps me keep everything else constant while I alter certain parts.
I start by adding the grid lines to my reference photograph.
I have created a new pattern in Photoshop in order to do this and I add my custom pattern to the photograph as a new layer.

This is the complete photograph gridded out, I could have altered the grid using the transform function to just cover the features, but as I can quite clearly see under the grid lines I decided not to bother.

I then print the photograph out, size doesn't matter although I always like large reference material, so I printed an A3 version. When I start drawing I use the photograph on my laptop so that I can enlarge/lighten etc parts of the photograph as needed. This helps greatly when drawing the features.
The next photograph shows part of the image with the squares labelled with a letter and number in pencil.

I will next draw a grid on my paper, in this case I am using a heavyweight Fabriano Artistico hot press paper, 640gms.

In my next post I'll show you the adjustments I make with the drawing.