Beginning, Middle, and another Middle

I don't know if it's the time of year but I cannot settle to finishing a project. I now have four 'in progress'. You have seen two of them, another one is a graphite drawing of a meerkat, but he only has an eye done up to now, so isn't worth meeting yet. The fourth is an acrylic painting on canvas, of yet another cat. You wouldn't believe that I'm actually much more of a dog than cat person.

I decided I wanted to do a painting rather than a drawing for a change, as I do feel that rightly or wrongly, some buyers prefer to purchase a work on canvas. Anyway I wont need to put it under glass it works out.

It is 11 x 14 inches, Liquitex acrylics on canvas and the cat is slightly larger than life.

As always I did the eyes first, bringing them more or less to completion, then started putting in some tones. I have to tell you this is my way of working, I cannot work the whole painting at once as recommended in most 'how to' books.

There is more of the cat than shown in my scans.

Just to show you the latest progress shots of my other projects.

I really will finish these before I start anything else, poor Van Gogh, that means I have to leave you again.

Lazy Days

The weather was nice for a change last weekend so we decided to take the puppies on a different walk.

We live close to Bolton Priory, a ruined Augustinian monastery on the banks of the River Wharfe which always makes for an interesting walk.

On this occasion though, we decided to walk from further down the river at Barden towards the Strid. The Strid is a short stretch of the river where the water is forced into a deep narrow channel, well worth a visit when the river is in spate. It is said to get its name from being a stride wide, but you don't want to try it out as over the years fatalities have occurred there.

This is the view from Barden.

Roxy and Rio enjoyed the different scenery and the many cuddles they got from different passers by.However they had to remain on their leads as they are not yet to be trusted on the recall, and there was stock in the fields.

Rio soon tired of lead walking and closed his eyes pitifully every time we stopped to admire the view or take photographs of the many trees. We decided not to go as far as the Strid as he complained we were making his legs shorter with all the walking, so we turned round and strolled back to the car.

Roxy however remained enthusiastic until the end.

The kitten painting I'm doing is at the stage where I need to look at it for a few days before moving on, I need to make sure I have the background right.

In the meantime I started another drawing of two sleeping cats. This is colored pencil and acrylic on blue pastel paper, round about 10 x 8 inches.

I am pleased with the progress so far, you do have to be aware that the colours are not quite true to life, the scans were not quite right.

Procratination

I am still struggling to get started with my Van Gogh project for this month although I have taken some photographs of the trees I intend to work on.

Everytime I sit down to start, I find some displacement activity to involve myself with. Most of these activities involve clearing up after two very bored puppies who want to be playing in the garden. It is so wet here though, that they are forced to spend most of their time inside. which leads to trouble with a capital T. Juno is so fed up with them leaping on him that he simply flattens them if they come within reach of his furry paw. Roma has disowned them completely and confided that she would like them adopting. Personally I'm inclined to agree with her.

However in order to do something productive I have done a small series of ACEO's. They are all done with Coloured Pencil, the first two on black colourfix, the third on black pastel card.

The first one is sold, I will be listing the other two on eBay later today.

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.

Progress on my New Cat

I went to visit the Spring Fair at the National Exhibition Centre in Birmingham on Tuesday as my Limited Edition Giclee prints were on display there.

The Spring Fair is:

"The UK's largest retail exhibition, twice the size of any UK competitor, and
"The largest showcase of British designed products in the world"

I am represented at the trade shows by the K2 gallery and it looked as if my prints were selling well, so fingers crossed for a successful week.

Back to new work, here are the updates on my latest cat

Juno and Van Gogh make their Marks

I admit the two things aren't really connected, I just wanted to comment on them both in the same post.
Juno went to his first show of 2007 yesterday, Midland Collie Club Championship show. He behaved perfectly and won his class, Graduate dog for anyone interested. He is still looking slightly immature as he is at the 'teenage' stage, but I was very pleased with him.

This is an earlier photograph, but he had a professional photo shoot yesterday so hopefully there are some nice shots to follow.

Being self taught I intend to use 2007 to have a look at different artists, mainly Old Masters, although I might sneak someone very much still alive in the pot.
The aim is to look at an individual for a month to try to discover more about their working methods, and then see how I can incorporate something from them into my own work. A little touch of informal, formal art education.
This is a project that I am undertaking together with other members of my online artist friends, Fineline Artists .

In January the artist chosen was John Singer Sargent. Although I didn't participate if you are interested in him have a look at the following blogs.
Maggie Stiefvater
Katherine Tyrrell and
Nicole Caulfield.
All these members of the group produced a work based on something they had absorbed from the work of Sargent, all are well worth a read.

For February the artist is Vicent Van Gogh.
The following fineline artists are all taking part in the projects:
Katherine
Maggie
Nicole
Wendy

My initial research left me feeling unmoved by a lot of his work, I really found it difficult to relate to most of his paintings.

One I found that I really do like is 'Starry Night over the Rhone'

http://www.vggallery.com/painting/p_0474.htm

However, during his short career he produced a large number of drawings, and these did inspire me. As my own personal struggle at the moment is with creating realistic backgrounds in my work, I have decided to study Van Gogh's landscape drawings, in particular the ones that include trees.

I want to look at how he created the marks that made his trees look solid and fit into the wider landscape. I also want to keep in mind that a lot of his drawings were preparatory work for his paintings. It was a revalation for me how much preparation Van Gogh did, I always thought his paintings were completely spontaneous. I guess that is the first thing I've learned about him.

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.

Wishing you all a very Happy, Healthy and Successful 2007

I am going to Scotland until Tuesday to celebrate the New Year in style, or as much style as possible with two collie pups in attendance. On my return home I am going into hospital for a few days, so I will be missing until around the 15/01. I just wanted to wish you all a Very Merry New Year, and hope that 2007 brings only good things.

This is the last photograph of the pups for 2006, the next ones should be from a beach in Scotland.

I have also started a new grey cat 'with a splash' to match the first one. It is all Coloured Pencil on Arches Hot Press Watercolour paper.

Demonstration of how to draw a Cat's Eye in Coloured Pencil

A quick hello from Rio who is progressing really well. He is now able to lead a normal puppy life with the other Glenspey collies.

I am often asked how I draw the eyes in my macro cat series, so I thought I'd do a quick demonstration to show you.

As this is just a demo I haven't been careful with the shape of the eye and as the diagrams are bigger than my drawing the colour might look less smooth than in real life.

I first draw the shape of my eye using Polychromos Paynes Grey, I indicate the pupil in the same, but use graphite to define the highlights then I can easily erase later.

The second step is covering the pupil in Black Grape taking care to reserve the highlights, and washing the iris with Cream, both colours are from the Prismacolor range (used to be Karisma in the UK).

I always use those initial colours no matter what colour the finished eye colour will be.
In the second diagram.I have strengthened the line round the eye using Polychromos Black Soft and softened the graphite round the highlights. Black Soft is a lovely pencil to use, as its name suggests it is a little less dense than black.

The next stage is to place a wash of Polychromos Indigo Blue over the pupil. Most of the iris is then washed with Deco Aqua except the little bit at the bottom and the edges which get another wash of cream.

I again put a wash over the pupil, this time with Polychromos Black Soft. I have completed another layer of Deco Aqua but changed the cream to Jasmine.

All the above layers are completed with a really sharp point. From the next layer I will start using different pressure to indicate marks in the eye.

I have added a layer of black to the pupil, then layered Polychromos Light Aqua over the Deco Aqua, put a layer of cream over the whole area except round the pupil and then another layer of Deco Aqua.
I've put the eye in context by adding some fur round the it using raw umber, dark brown and black.

Back with the eye I used Aquamarine with a really sharp point to start defining marks, then washed the whole thing with cream pressing on slightly harder

I darkened the pupil againwith black, put some more Aquamarine marks in, then added two layers using Jasmine and Deco Aqua working them in to give the effect I'm looking for. I have started to add some Black Grape for shadow.The eye is just starting to look like it has some depth.

I once again go over the pupil, this time using Black Grape.

Added light green over the shadow and jasmine around the edges, then layered cream with medium pressure. Added light blue in the large highlight

I then layered white over everything except the pupil, worked more deco aqua, light green and jasmine in, again looking to create depth. I took a little of the blue out of the top of the highlight, then used white with a really heavy pressure.I added indigo to the shadow.At actual size this is looking reasonable.I will work another layer of cream then blend using a colourless blender.

I hope this has been useful, if you would like a demonstartion of fur or nose, ears etc just leave me a comment to let me know.