Jude

Today I took Oscar and Wilbur to the framers, they will be ready next week for me to collect and send on their way to the client. I will be sure to post pictures as they will both look lovely in their frames.

Here is the work I have completed so far on Jude, I'm posting a few WIP pictures as I have been scanning at various stages to post on Facebook. So here she is, hoping to have her finished by the end of the week!

Weimeraner for PP Diploma

A quick post (again) I'm finally brave enough to show my WIP of the moment. A weimeraner in a simple garden scene, painted in oils on linen for the pet portrait diploma. After working mainly on the face and neck yesterday this area is almost complete, only some glazes and final tweaking to do. I'm actually really proud of this now, it's all coming together in the end! Lots more background work to do however, this is my penultimate set of exercises so I am determined to do them thoroughly and get them right.

Back to Posting

It seems I have neglected my posting yet again. I haven't been neglecting my art, but have been working on college pieces and gotten one assignment back for which I got a good assessment so I am very pleased. Here is one of the finished pieces, I started and finished in the same day so it was a very quick one for me and I have called it "Anyone for Tennis?

Anyone for Tennis?

In other news I have also been working on this little cheetah club, which I am hoping to tweak throughout the day until he is completely finished.



Amur Leopard WIP

I know I said I was going to concentrate on my college work...but, I'm waiting for a delivery of new canvases and Pastelmat, and the temptation to paint this amazing leopard just got too great. I'm very fortunate in that a work colleague of my boyfriend is allowing me to use his photos as references. He has some really amazing stuff, and a LOT of squirrels! So there may be a squirrel portrait in the works soon.

I'm very grateful to him and I said I would send him links of my WIPs, so thanks again Jon, and hope you like my interpretations of your brilliant photos! This is only how much I managed to get done today, I started at about 12 o'clock and finally finished the base drawing at about 2. So I only have a background and an ear to show. It's a big one again, 50cm by 70cm on Pastelmat (ofc) Please excuse the bad quality of the photo, my camera battery is charging so this was taken with my phone.

College Work

As promised, I didn't wait too long to post again! Here is today's work. This is one of my college pieces and as such is more of a practice than an actual portrait. The brief was to paint a close up portrait of a horses head and bridle, in any medium, to accurately portray the bridle and the shadows it casts upon the horse. I decided to do oils because it's the medium I'd most like to master and I'm sure Mel can offer me lots of help.

I found a free reference photo online and started work before Christmas. I've blocked in the main colours of the horse, some more refining is needed before I can start detailing though. Tomorrow I''m going to finish off the basic parts of the bridle and to try and blend the horse into the black background somewhat.

I'm not entirely happy, the canvas quality isn't great and it shows, this photo that I have taken isn't the best either. In fact, it looks pretty ugly at this stage. But that is what the course is all about, I can't expect to master something straight away, it will be great to get feedback once it's completed.

Lion WIP

Another quickie post today, I'm hoping to have this guy finished today at somepoint so want to spend as much time as I can away from the PC and at the drawing board. More of the lion done, will block the rest of the mane in then go back and pick out more details on the face.

Lion WIP

Another quick post today! I'm busy in the kitchen tonight mastering another art, the art of Sushi! Not completely traditional as I couldn't get any fish quite fresh enough for preparing it raw, and mine will be vegetarian, but it's a fun and complicated dish to prepare! In the meantime, I have done some more work on my lion. Working from the left to the right so as not to smudge as per usual. I've also selected my next few reference pictures for the Pet Portrait Diploma exercises and will beginning work on them as soon as I can, which may mean the original art is on a back burner for a while.

Rhina - GSD in graphite

A quick post this morning as I wanted to keep the blog updated with all my work, but didn't want to inundate single posts with many different artworks. So here is Rhina, a female GSD commission that I started last night, and hope to get finished within the next couple of hours or so. For some reason, the quality of the scan isn't great but I'll make sure to improve it when scanning the final image. I've also changed her nose position slightly so it's a bit unsightly at the moment!Waiting to have our fridge repaired today and as usual the repairman couldn't give me an exact time, so I'll be in the house all day most likely with plenty of time for work.

Lions and Damsons and Jams, oh my!

As this, somewhat whimsical post title suggests, my time of late has been taken over completely by the afforementioned items. Damsons, as I've mentioned before, have become the bane of my existence, littering the garden, getting trodden on and trampled into the house and matted into Zac's fur. The fight back begun last week with copious amounts of jam and chutney making! Our cupboards are now full enough of damson preserve to last us at least a year, with more of the little devils still to be picked from the tree. My next plans are for Damson Gin and Vodka, which can be nice Christmas gifts and also will be great for my own personal use (in moderation of course!)


Onto the Lion: I decided to paint another large pastel piece in order to take to the gallery, and I found a picture of a male lion looking skywards in the free section on a stock photo site and thought it was a beautiful pose. So here he is, I'm toying with the title "Contemplation" but I am terribly indecisive so it may change several times before he is actually finished.

A little bit of painting after a holiday

I've been away from the drawing board and easel for the past two weeks, I've had a bit of a "holiday" consisting of staying at home and not doing very much but we also had my dad and stepmum visit for the first time since we moved to England in 2008, and we had a nice few days of exploring Leamington, Stratford and going to the Twenty20 cricket final in Birmingham. Anyway, I have started working again now, despite being drowned in damsons:



More on that later! But I have begun my very first oil painting. It's a bit tricky, but I'm enjoying oils so much more than acrylic! Here is one of the first stages of the painting, just blocking in colours and tones, will wait for him to dry and do some more work in the next couple of days. I also have the Bernese to continue with in the meantime and I'm planning to start another big pastel original so watch this space.

Bernese Mountain Dog

Just a quick update tonight, I had meant to blog about this piece on Sunday but got distracted by cooking, cleaning, all the fun things that need doing on a Sunday afternoon! I was also busy monitoring the progress of the baby pigeons who had hatched months ago in one of the trees in our garden, of which I have some pictures that I will share as soon as I have more time. I also started another original wildlife pastel painting today, most of the background has gone in so I will post the first stages soon, hopefully tomorrow :) In the meantime, here is the second scan of my Bernese Mountain Dog portrait that I am working on in graphite. I like to try and work left to right so as not to smudge anything and tomorrow I will be working on the left part of his face and left ear, so he should look much better once that is done as right now he's looking a little odd!

Zac continued

Just a quick update tonight as I want to be able to go finish this picture soon. He's going to be the new face on some of my advertisements and also on my vouchers which I want to start working on straight away. It's importrant not to rush but I'm getting so close to finishing it's tempting to "speed up" a little. I should definitely finish him tomorrow, I have big plans for sorting out our spare bedroom and giving my studio a little spruce up on Saturday and I'd like to be able to work on the aforementioned graphic design work in the evening.

Zac Pencil Portrait

Oh dear, again it seems I've neglected my little blog. When I set up my website my other half added a feature to blog, however I found it difficult to edit and I thought a blogger site would be much easier and therefore would mean I could update much more. I really have no excuse so I won't make any and will continue on with posting again.

I did eventually finish my horse portrait and will post the result soon. Here is the first stage of a portrait in graphite pencil of my dog Zac. I think it shows a lot of progress from my very first graphite portrait!



Today has been a hectic day, a visit to the dentist then meeting up with my other half for lunch, home and then housework for the rest of the afternoon, so I took some time out to do this just for me. I'm also intending on taking Zac back to Guide Dogs today for a visit to let them know how he is getting on almost a year since we adopted him.

"Fenix Song" WIP

Here is a WIP of "Fenix Song" I've been working on for a couple of weeks in acrylics. I decided I wanted to do an original horse painting, I chose the reference from my backlog of photos I've collected and began sketching it on the day of the Newbury races where two horses were killed by electrocution. I've always had problems naming originals so I decided to call this "Fenix Song" parts of the name from both of the horses who died that day, just as my own little remembrance. I've been off and on at this as I had two commissions to finish before the end of February but I've managed to get a fair bit done today although it's still very much in it's early stages.

I haven't done much with the background as of yet, I think I will continue on the horse and see what will suit him afterwards! I'm hoping to get to Warwick races in the next couple of weeks to take some reference photos for inspiration, plus it's always a nice excuse for a day out.

Testing!

I've just linked my neglected blog to my Facebook fan page, hopefully this will help me keep both this blog and facebook updated more regularly! And here is the WIP of my first digital portrait, hoping to finish this week!

Sunny...

Yesterday my life, was filled with rain. Sunny, is my latest commission! I've put my elephant to one side of the drawing board and begun this cutie. His name is Sunny and I have had the Boney M song on continuous play since starting this drawing!

Just like the song, it's happy and upbeat, and I have a really good feeling about this one turning out brilliantly.

At the moment it's just emerging out of the Ugly Stage, but I am posting all of my steps so far.

I've brightened up the pictures a little in Photoshop since they have not turned out very well in this light. He is much less yellow in real life, but it's easier to see the stages of the work like this.

Elephant WIP

I'm working through this slowly but surely. I'm finding it difficult to work on the background so I am having some time out and working on the ears. I will flit back and forth until I feel happy with them both and then move downwards again.

Angie has moved!

Well we managed, my other half and I moved almost 2 weeks ago now. We have had no Internet up until Friday and then we were away for the weekend so sadly I didn't get a chance to post. My new studio is now set up with my drawing table and materials, we just need a few shelves and things for storage up in the corner and it should be all done. I love my new drawing table, the angle can be adjusted, it has a nice metal rail at the bottom for catching pencils etc that may try and roll off PLUS it has a built in light box!




I'm managing to get some more work done on my elephant today, despite having a lot of boxes to unpack still. I'm working more on the background today and hope to move onto the ears soon.

Elephant WIP

Well I didn't manage to come back online last night and post about the work I had done yesterday, so here I am today. I'm hoping to do some more work on this tonight after we are done building things in the new house, but here are the first few stages I did yesterday. This is an African Elephant, done in pastels on A3 size Pastelmat.


The picture is going through the "ugly stage" as I lay down blocks of base colour and work from left to right. I have also left the edges a little fuzzy as I will be mounting this once it is finished and the edges will be covered up.


I've added some violet on top of the sandy brown colour for the skin on his back.



I've then begun to add in some detail to the left, I will continue working on this side and then move slightly to the right once it is done. As always the cropping of my photos leaves a lot to be desired!

If I'm not too tired tonight after building tables and drawers in the new house I will have some more to show tomorrow.