I'm Back, but Sleep Deprived

We had a fantastic holiday, Canada was stunning, Yellowstone and Mount Ranier wonderful and Hawaii fun.
One of the best bits was meeting a cyber friend and her dog, we had a lovely chat but didn't get to spend long enough together.

The journey home from Hawaii was trouble free, but long and boring, leaving me achieving very little today.
The house survived as did my eldest son although both looked a little rumpled round the edges. He got his A level results last week and will be going to University in Septemeber. My youngest son got his GCSE results today and I have to do a little parental bragging, he got 4 grade A's and 7 A*'s.

I took hundreds of photographs and although not lucky enough to see a wild bear, I did see many other species of wild animals including a wolf, coyote, grey fox, moose, elk, racoon, and several others. Most will feature in my future work.


I will leave you with a photograph of Mount Ranier until tomorrow when I will share my news about the Society of Feline Artists 12th Exhibition.

Missing a Little Longer

Sorry that I haven't been keeping my blog up to date, but I've been really busy.

I had my first stall at a cat show which went really well. I have now applied to exhibit at two more, one being the Supreme cat show at the NEC, so I need to concentrate on drawing as many different breeds as possible.
I have until November for the Supreme cat show but only September for the other one.
I'm now going on my holidays, my first visit to Canada and the USA so there will be no further updates until the 22/08.


I'll leave you with my latest update on Shred the Norwegian Forest Cat.

National Exhibition of Wildlife Art

I finally completed my squirrel and got her framed ready to meet the deadline for the last handing in day for the NEWA exhibition.

NEWA is the National Exhibition of Wildlife Art and is the biggest wildlife art exhibition outside London.

The 2007 website will open on Saturday 21st July and will showcase the work of all the artists gaining entry to the show. All work will be available for purchase through the website.

http://www.newa-uk.com/

The exhibition is held at Gordale Garden Centre on the Wirral, if you like wildlife art and are in the area it will be well worth visiting.

The exhibition runs from the 20th July - 5th August from 9.30am - 6pm every day.

I entered my meerkat 'Sentry Duty' and of course my squirrel 'On the Edge', and have had my fingers crossed that at least one of them got selected.

This morning I found that the list of exhibitors for 2007 was posted on the website. Although I hardly dared look, you cannot imagine my excitement when I saw my name included. I don't know if just one or both have been selected, but I can't wait for the preview evening on Thursday.

Last weekend I attended my second workshop held by Mike Sibley. This time we were studying mist, water and reflections, it was a great two days of which I will write more later.

Almost Finished Squirrel

I have been working on my squirrel and have almost finished her.

There has been a lot of discussion recently about Graphitints and whether they are lightfast. I was aware that some of them are very fugitive but it seems some of the ones that appear lightfast on the chart provided by Derwent, might in fact fade rather quickly. I use the graphitints dry and haven't had any problems so wonder if the addition of water causes them to fade faster.

As I was worried that my squirrel might fade I have changed the indigo graphitint for an indigo prismacolor, and the cool brown graphitint for a brown coloursoft. I also went over the entire squirrel to ensure it wouldn't fade in the near future.

Squirrel, Floods and Photoshop

Anyone living in the UK probably knows about the floods in Yorkshire, we have had so much rain I'm thinking of trading in my car for an ark.

Twice I've been stranded as the trains failed to cope with the wrong sort of water. Which joins the wrong sort of leaves and the wrong sort of snow as reasons for delays and cancellations. However this time I'll forgive British Rail, just.

I check all the dog paws every evening for the first signs of webbing, and even cast sneak looks at the human feet, so far so good, no mutations appearing yet.

As we live on a hill it is easy to trivialise the flooding, but I do feel for all the people whose lives have been turned upside down.

The squirrel is moving slowly forward, but I need to finish her next week so hopefully I will update more frequently.

Finally, I have been practicing my new found skills with photoshop, using layers to create mock ups for possible future projects.

Here are a couple of possibilities, on these the lighting is not consistent and would need working on.

Where I've Been

At the end of last week I attended Mike Sibley's 3 day graphite pencil technique workshop.
Mike is well known worldwide for his graphite drawings of dogs, his drawings are simply stunning. If you're not familiar with his work have a look at his website.

To see his original work was an absolutley jaw dropping experience and demonstrates just how much is lost when viewing images on a computer screen.

Several members on the course were my internet friends from the animal and wildlife forum on the Artpapa site. They were a great bunch of people and I hope we all meet up again some time.

I'm actually going back for a two day course in July where Mike will share some different techniques.

The main thing that I came away with was the ability to see rather than just look, which hopefully then translates into three dimensional rather than two dimensional form.

The setting for the workshop was a beautiful village hall situated in the countryside and by the end of day two we were all studying the trees, walls, even the hens which were wandering about in the most minute detail.

Just in case you wanted to see the hens, here they are.

To illustrate looking rather than seeing, the first exercise we did was to draw four objects from memory, there was much scratching of heads as we tried to remember the key pointers of rock, bark, leaf and feather. We then studied the objects and had another go, everyone's second drawing was much better than the first.

We then spent time looking at negetive drawing. I knew the theory and have even tried this in the past but it all fell into place once I'd watched Mike's various demonstrations.

On the second afternoon and day 3 we all started work on a line drawing Mike handed out. I can honestly say all 12 versions turned out differently, although non of us managed to complete very much.

Here's mine, I do intend to finish it, I'm just not sure when at the moment.

It was a fantastic 3 days, talking art with other like minded individuals and best of all learning from a true master at his craft.

Thank you Mike.

Doing Too Many Things at Once

I seem to have been busy for the last few weeks and fast falling behind on everything. It is not helped by the stress in the household at present, due to two teenage boys sitting very important exams.

My youngest soon wants to be a Doctor and takes his exams very seriously, my eldest son alternates between wanting to be a Pilot or a Formula One driver. I almost have to tie him to his desk to do some work, but at eighteen I have decided he is old enough to know how much work he needs to do. He has been offered a place at two Universities to study Computer Science and already has the grades needed for one University so his dedication to study is not great.

I have done a little work on my squirrel and my cat but I am still working on the large commission. I can't show you the commission yet as it is to be a surprise 50th birthday present. I do hope to show it in the future though.

Last week I had a sudden desire to do something completely different, I wanted a break from fur.

I have always liked atmospheric images so decided to create my own. Of course I couldn't ignore animals completely, so I put Juno into the starring role.

This is on 30 x 40 cm pastelbord, using mainly Unison soft pastels from the dark set.

I have made up the background so far, but I am using a reference photo of Juno that I took whilst on holiday in Scotland. I am going to use one of my own tree photographs for the large tree that will be on the right.

I will add the backlighting from the moon at the end as I have a terrible tendency to drag my hand through the blue and spread it everywhere.

The Fine Line Artists Exhibition is now on at the Jitterbug Cafe & Roasting Co. for more details and to see the artwork on display have a look at the Exhibition page on the Fine Line Artists website.
ampersand pastelbord
Unison pastels
fantasy art

A very wet Bath

I know, I know, you would expect a bath to be wet, but this was Bath with a capital B. We were showing Juno and Roxie at Bath Championship show last Sunday and it rained for the whole 500 mile round trip and the entire time we were at the show.

The ring was under cover which was fine, but to get there entailed a hike through the mud.

Now I used to think Juno bounded about when he first arrived at a show, but Roxie is in a different league entirely.

Here she is on being released from the car, can you imagine how much mud she spreads over everything. We are thinking of tying her in a sheet at the next wet show, in fact I'm thinking of showing her tied in a sheet. At least then, the judge wouldn't actually be able to see how little of her was touching the ground at any one time. I'm sure judges sometimes wonder if she actually has four legs.

The ring itself had very long grass at the edges and as Juno was in a big class we spent quite a long time stood in it. Juno became convinced that there were 'things' moving about down there. He was so fascinated that he could not be convinced that he ought to have his nose up and tail down, so he moved with his nose down and tail up. The beautiful Briard bitch in the next ring also contributed to his tail carriage, he might have impressed her but sadly didn't do the same for our judge.

Roxie did better and gained a place in her class, but she was also interested in what might be hiding in the grass. She thought there might be snakes, and used that as her excuse for only having one leg on the ground at a time.

Please all cross your fingers for better weather next weekend!

Now to share progress on my cat, it is going well although I still need to make the fur a little more apricot, it is a bit harsh in some places yet.

House Paint help with my New Cat

I still haven't really tried out my new Derwent tinted charcoal pencils because I've started a new Norwegian Forest Cat portrait.

I'm going to be at a Championship cat show in July (more later) and want to show potential clients what a commission could look like.

The breeds at the show will be Norwegian Forest, Maine Coon and Birman.

As most of my own photographs are of NFC's that is what I'm starting with.

I've decided to offer two main sizes for commissions as I'm going to use pastelbord, 11 x 14 inches and 12 x 16 inches.

This is 12 x 16 and will be in coloured pencil, I will use solvent in the later stages.

The cat belongs to John and Caroline Tipper of the Tiganlea Norwegian Forest Cats.

I have only done the eye up to now so to make this post more interesting I thought I'd share my method of looking for the local colours in my reference.

This is where the house paint help comes in. I don't use the paint just the paint sample cards.

I have realised just how much the eye can deceive when trying to decide which pencil or paint to use for the local colour. To try to be more accurate I have used various methods to establish the colour. I will only share one of these, as the others are even sillier than this one.

While drawing a Rough Collie in pastel I have been known to take the painting and hold my own Collies fur against the board. Now nice tempered though my dogs are, this does not come on their list of 'what shall we do today'. They usually struggle which results in the said fur being left all over the painting. All I will say in conclusion is be very careful how you try to remove dog fur from pastel.

However on a recent visit to the local DIY store I spotted the answer to all my problems. There, sitting quietly in a display cabinet was a rainbow of colours, the paint sample cards.

I released several of these into my custody, then went back and obtained several more. The samples are free and looking at the amount thrown onto the floor the ones I took had moved onto a better life.

They are perfect, I punched a hole in the side of each colour and now I can place the little strip over whatever reference I'm using. This can be a photograph, or my dogs or the grass outside, the possibilities are endless.

Here are a few of the ones I've been using to look at the colours in this cat.

So, that's how house paint can help in the creation of your next painting.

Finished at Last

I got the horse finished at last and sent on its sea voyage. I was really pleased with how well the varnishing turned out. I used a silk rather than gloss varnish and liked the slightly dull finish.

The grey squirrel hasn't been back to visit for a few days so I was pleased to see two of the young yesterday. One was really athletic and ran up and down our two silver birches, jumping easily from one to the other. The other plodded up the tree realised the gap was too wide for a jump and sort of slithered back to ground level, crept across the lawn pretending it wasn't really there and struggled up the other tree. Obviously tired it then sat there for the next hour while it's sibling played at teasing the dogs, running about and stopping frequently to swear at them. I could see that it's mother had taught it well.

I have bought some of the new Derwent tinted graphite pencils so will hopefully be able to share with you what they are like to use.

Just Horsing Around

Sorry I haven't been updating on a regular basis, life got in the way. I am going to try to update at least every other day with something, even if it is a photograph rather than artwork.

The dogs are all as mad as ever, although over the last couple of months we have noticed Saska is really showing signs of old age. On wakening from a deep sleep she often doesn't recognise us for a couple of seconds and does her best guard dog routine. But she still enjoys her walks and chasing her ball, sometimes now though she lets one of the others bring it back, she tells us she's training them in the art of retrieve.
Roxy got her first rosette at a Championship show last Sunday, she is starting to look a little bit more mature. Sadly Rio is quite small still and we do wonder if he is going to grow large enough to be shown. He isn't worried though, and likes staying at home with my sons, who spoil him when Roxy is away.

The squirrel has had to be put on one side while I sort out my entries for the Fine Line Artists latest exhibition.

The theme of this show is 'Portals' and it is taking place in June at the Jitterbug Cafe & Roasting Co. in Ontario, Canada.

We have all interpreted 'portal' in a different way which should make for a very interesting exhibition.

For my first one I decided to use portal as being a doorway, in this case a stable door.

Only ever having drawn one horse before I am finding this quite a difficult challenge, however he is looking more horse, and less frog like now.

I am using my Ampersand Pastelbord, it is 30 x 40 cm and is the sand coloured one.

I have used coloured pencil, then Zest it solvent on the background. The solvent really saturates the colour and makes blending very easy.

ampersand pastelbord
coloured pencil
horse drawing
Zest it

Living on the Edge

I'm lucky enough to have a quite a large garden which is visited by a wide variety of animals and birds.

We buy bird food by the sackful in the winter to stock our feeders, which as well as attracting many birds also attracts the grey squirrels.

I know many people regard these as pests, but we don't have the native red squirrels in my area so I don't need to feel bad about being fond of my grey's.

One female squirrel who I think is feeding young, is particularly tame and feeds right outside my window. She is easy to photograph and after I had taken several nice shots of her I decided it was time to put pencil to paper.

I intend to call this 'Living on the Edge' partly because she is balanced right on the edge of a feeding dish, high above the ground, and partly because they are in conflict with man throughout some of their range.

I need to add here that the collies are much less fond of the squirrels, and tell me in no uncertain terms that I should let them out to play with them. In turn the squirrels have come to recognise the dogs can't reach them and stand there making rude squirrel gestures.

I have recently received some new paper to try. This is Mellotex which comes in various weights and shades of white.

I ordered the 340gms as I like a fairly heavy paper and this is ultra white.

After my Meerkat I am still in graphite mode so decided to continue to use graphite with the addition of Graphitints.

The graphitints are made by Derwent and are watersoluble coloured graphite. They can be used dry to give a hint of colour, or wet if you want a brighter effect.

They are manufactured in 24 colours but not all of them are lightfast so I restrict my use of them to the ones classed as lightfast.

The size will be about 18 x 14 inches and I am using a HB mechanical pencil and graphitints in cool brown, dark indigo and cloud grey.

Feeling Old but Pleased

Well today my eldest son is 18, a milestone for both of us. To think of my baby boy (good job he doesn't read this) as being a young man has just added years onto my official age.

At times over the last couple of years we have wondered if we would make it to today, as we have both faced serious health issues.

But, following major heart surgery my son is hopefully as good as new, and following the completion of treatment for cancer I pray I will be around for a long time to come.

So, although having an 18 year old makes me feel well and truly middle aged, I'm truly grateful that I am here to have those feelings.

Tonight we will be going out for a family meal and celebrating a new phase in all our lives. We are now moving on from computers and car envy, to girls and car owning, which is a whole new worry. He does seem to do things the right way though, as he has recently changed his car but kept his girlfriend.

On the art front, I worked really hard this week and finished both Rio and my Meerkat. I decided for the print of my Meerkat to go with Sepia which I thinks adds a little bit of warmth.

So here are:-

'Puppy Love'

'Sentry Duty' aka 'Does my Bottom Look Big in This' original

'Sentry Duty' print

I am going to start a squirrel in graphitint later today, (before the celebratory wine) so will share my progress with you.

Does My Bottom Look Big in This?

I was showing the progress of my Meerkat to my cyber chums, and my friend and fellow artist Katherine Tyrell came up with this title "Does My Bottom Look Big in This?". I have to say that looking at his pose it fits him really well. So it is now adopted as the official working title.

For all things art have a look at Katherine's blog, Making a Mark

Anyway here is the progress of my Meerkat.

And a close up.

I've been giving Roxy some individual attention lately as she was starting to rely on Rio to protect her from everything and anything. So we've been going on walks in the early mornings or evenings without the other dogs.

One evening we saw a stoat, it ran up and down the top of the wall next to us and then played hide and seek peeping in and out of the stones. Unfortunately my interest was much greater than Roxy's who watched for about two minutes and then decided to act like the stoat. She hurled herself about at the end of her lead until we were both tied in knots and the stoat had got bored and continued on its way.

Here are a couple of views from the 'stoat walk' including Roxy with Roma in the background.

Rio in Repose

I'm having a break from graphite, so my Meerkat is waiting in the wings.

This is Rio at four months, just after the splint was removed from his jaw, his expression says it all.

It is coloured pencil on sand coloured Ingres paper, about 14 x 12 inches.

I am working much faster than usual, not aiming for as many layers, but to capture his expression. The last scan represents about 3 hours work.

Wild about Graphite

Every now and then I get cravings, in my case not for food, but for the humble pencil.

I can just sit down with my pencil and start to create.

I mainly use a 2mm clutch pencil made by Staedtler, just occasionally changing to a 0.5mm lead for very fine detail. I mostly use a HB lead, but do add darks with a 2B, even sometimes going as far as 6B in the eye. If I use a 6B I always then go over it with a harder lead to dull the shine.

I decided I wanted to do another wild animal piece so had a look through my photographs.

This Meerkat is from one of my own images, I take many Meerkat photographs as I love their funny little faces.

We had a trip to the Zoo at weekend and the Meerkats posed for me.

My drawing is about 12 x 8 inches, on Arches Hot Press Watercolour paper. I really like Arches paper as it is smooth but can take plenty of graphite. The only slight disadvantage is that it is a touch cream coloured, which makes reproduction a little more difficult than if it was a bright white.

There is more at the bottom of the picture but it doesn't fit on my scanner.

I'm in Love

It's true, Spring has arrived, the dogs are frolicking and I've fallen in love, with Ampersand Pastelbord.
Ampersand have some very interesting supports on offer and their website is well worth a visit.
www.ampersandart.com

Several of my fellow Fine Line artists have already used this support and liked it, so I decided to give it a try. Unfortunately I could not find a UK supplier so had to use the US firm Dick Blick's mail order service. I have always found their service to be excellent, but you do have to be aware that on top of postage and packing there is the added import tax to pay.

I ordered small pieces in grey, white and sand and a couple of larger pieces of white.

I am wanting to paint some wildlife pieces so I decided to use one of my own reference photographs of a cheetah. The small size will be preparation work for a larger painting at some stage.

Here are the stages in the creation of 'Aloof' size 5"x7", coloured pencil on Ampersand pastelbord.

You can use solvent such as Zest-It on the pastelbord and it gives the most brilliant colour saturation.

The great advantage of using pastelbord is that the work can be varnished and framed without the need for glass.

Mother's Day Family Portrait

As it's Mother's day here in the UK we took my mum out for lunch, and then went to her house so that my son could install her new printer.

The pups came with us, so I took the opportunity of taking a family portrait while we had Zeus on hand.


Jorja wasn't all that keen on sitting with her grand children, but we did persuade her in the end.


So left to right, grandparents Zeus and Jorja, pups Rio and Roxy.

You have to forgive Zeus his ears, as he's got older they've gone straighter, and he's nine now.

The pups are six months old on Friday and they're going to their first show next weekend, that will be fun.

Quick Updates

I've been really busy this last week which is why I haven't updated my blog.

Friday was Crufts day for Juno, and although he didn't get a place we had a most enjoyable day. We did receive the photo's that he had taken after winning his class at Midland Collie Club. The copyright belongs to SN Cards but I have permission to post them. I love this photograph and happily for me, Mr Newton has given me permission to use it as a reference for a new Juno painting.

I have done a little more on two of the three cats.

First the drawing one.

Then the acrylic one.

Update on Acrylic cat and Van Gogh Tree

Well I finally did something for my Van Gogh project as February slipped into March. I did beat the deadline as I finished it at about 10.30pm on the 28/02.

Don't get too excited because I'm not sure you will see much relevance to Van Gogh in my drawing, but I will explain.

So, meet my Hawthorn inspired by Van Gogh.

So what on earth relevance does this have to the work of Van Gogh:-

1. It took me so long to generate the little enthusiasm I had to do it that I felt rather like tearing off my own ear.

2. I used marks to draw it, I appreciate these are not the much larger more defined marks that VG used, but it is a definite change from my usual style.

3. Apart from the tree it is all done from my imagination.

4. I resisted the very strong impulse to add a sitting cat, that would definitely not have been in the spirit of VG.

So there you are, the closest I will get to VG, although I have to say I do now have a great respect for his work and did in the end enjoy drawing my little scene.

My acrylic cat is moving along nicely, here are a few updates.

I might not get much painting done over the next two days, it is the British Collie Club's Championship show tomorrow and we are showing Juno, so today is preparation for tomorrow.