I also went out to take some photographs of flowers, foliage and walls today, dodging the rain showers which were torential. Here's one of a Foxgloves which I plan on drawing at some point.
As with last year the organisers of the exhibition are to be congratulated for the professional way everything runs. Once again handing in day ran like clockwork, it only took minutes for my work to be checked in, labelled and carried away. This is not as easy as it sounds with high volume of submissions expected each day.
There is plenty of parking at Gordale and there are plenty of signs directing people to the exhibition.
The exhibition itself is a delight to wander round, and the on line gallery means that anyone unable to visit can still view and purchase work.
As well as simply enjoying looking at the diverse work on show, I wanted to use the opportunity as a learning experience.
After an initial look round I went back to study some of the work in depth.
My first impressions were:-
There were an awful lot of Lions and Tigers, all well done and different, but I might work on a more unusual animal or bird for next year.
Birds were popular, from simple graphic designs to paintings including detailed habitat.
To catch the eye from across the room a picture had to either have an excellent and different design, or be strong colour wise. There is so much art of a consistently high standard that to stand out is a real achievement.
On more careful study of images that particularly appealed to me, I found they all had one thing in common, a really strong design. Those artists had obviously put a lot of thought into how best to present their chosen subject.
Some of the ones I liked were close crops of animals, in each case the crop had obviously been chosen to reveal some part of the personality of that particular species.
Although I liked a lot of the work I had two favourites:-
'Achromatic' by Darryn Eggleton
and
If you get time have a look at the gallery even if you can't get to the exhibition in person.
Links
It is the scan that is crooked, not my lines!
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.
Today was the day every animal owner dreads, we had to make the decision to have Saska put to sleep.
She broke her hock trying to jump over a gate and would have needed it pinning. After discussing all the options with the Vet, and taking into account that she already had chronic arthritis we decided that the kindest thing for her, was to give her rest.
She loved to run and hadn't been able to do that for several months so hopefully she's reunited with her friends, Dexter, Honey, Fleur and Chelsey, chasing after those pesky rabbits.
The Snow Leopards are even larger, approximately 20 x 16, on Mellotex Ultra white paper, using mechanical pencils, 4B to 4H.
The reference material for both paintings is mine, the mountains of Scotland have been adapted to provide the basis of the Himalayas.
I photographed the Deer in Scotland, and the Snow Leopards at Marwell Zoological Park.
After rushing round all day to get things at work sorted out I got another phone call from the hospital to say they don't have a bed for me this weekend, I'm back to where I started, oh well.
I had to have a blood test today prior to going in hospital at the end of the month. Getting blood from me is every nurse's worst nightmare. Today I really excelled myself, nurse 1 had four attempts before passing me on, nurse 2 had 2 attempts before admitting defeat and sending for a Doctor. The Doctor ignored all the usual places and went into the side of my wrist where he hit gold and creared a positive torrent. It never ceases to amaze me that if I get the tiniest paper cut I can soak everything with blood in seconds, show my veins a needle and they sink out of sight refusing to yield a drop.
These are a couple of his images.
I've also continued working on my tiger and sorted out a composition for my next graphite piece, so I'm feeling very productive.
That is only a small part of the picture, he will have more of his body drawn eventually.
There is more head and body in the complete image, but it didn't fit on my scanner.
