Bambinos

Like I mentioned before this is a whole new exciting ball game for me and like a kid in a candy store I just gotta try everything. If you haven't already gathered I'm a bit of an animal lover so those furries were my first dabble in things arty. While most folks would expand from people to pets I went against the traffic and the opposite way, from pets to people.  Below is my first little girl in graphite which I can post now because it is Mom's birthday tomorrow:-)

And then I got my colored pencils :-) so the world on my paper changed. I posted this on my FB page first with the title my first baby and I got congratulatory mails..........sorry to disappoint but this is a baby I only made on paper:-)

Campaign time!!!

20/20/20.
From the 20th of September to the 20th of October, 20% of all pet portrait commissions go to Doggie Orphans Great and Small (D.O.G.S)  (they rescue cats too). These make great presents and will be ready on time for Christmas  if ordered within this time frame. Check out the Nitty gritty page for details of pricing and photo tips.

This is Jack Jack, from a previous campaign I ran with D.O.G.S.

A new first

My first international order went off today.I don't think I'll rest easy until I know it has arrived safely. Kind of overkill I suppose but it had four layers of extra strength cardboard, a hard plastic case and tissue to protect that. All of the above in a bubble wrap envelope with a big ole red FRAGILE stamped on the outside. Fly safe, stay straight and undamaged and grace the walls of your new home with elegance like the lady in the picture has done for so many years:-)....................ok , yeah I got a little attached to this one:-)

A pet portrait lies within

Typhoon eile!

From one solid colour to another. Frost taught me white. He was a very handsome pure white Malmute possible Samoyed cross. White to look at, but it took about 8 colours to get his coat right.

Finished Frost

In between commissions I need to take some down time and draw some art that isn't too important if I mess up. Art that I can go with the flow with. This pup was just what the doctor ordered. Fun to do but not quite right. Plus I got to use about half of my new box of colours so it was all good:-)

I'll call her Doodle ;-)

Other mediums

Just opened my eyes and there they were in all their glory right in front of me. One minute they were a thumbnail on an art website and the next they were here in Okinawa, just imploring me to play.  I find it hard to say no, so instead I said yes:-) My Prismaclor coloring pencils were a like the best box of chocolates you could hope for.... they had a glorious third layer.

Showing only one layer here because I don't want to get you over excited:-)

Having recently acquired artist quality black paper I was excited to see what all the hype was about these colouring pencils. I went straight for the blues because I have a white dog with one blue eye that I'm very eager to draw. I wanted to see how they all looked against the black back drop and how vividly they would stand out. These pencils are in a word AWESOME. They are so vibrant, their pigment is full of vitality. VERY excited to work with these and expand my horizons some more.

hmmmmm the photo ...my camera skills don't do the colours justice.

Here are those eyes I was telling you about. I started this as a practice sheet but it was going really well and everything was falling into place. I didn't document each stage as I thought I'd be doing it again. We'll see, I'm loving how it is working out, it is on my right track so I'll take the pictures from here on out. I still have some way to go so we'll have to see which way that cookie is going to crumble.

Frost

New page in the title line :-)

I just finished my first black haired (and bits of white) animal commission. What an opportunity for learning it turned out to be. I saw her wonderful HUGE file photographs (Thank you http://www.chrisusher.com/about-chris.html for the outstanding photographs provided) and thought , "YES, I have this". Well suddenly I was on a learning curve I didn't even know had been  looming. Black fur isn't as easy as it makes itself out to be I'll have you know:-)

As usual I started with the eyes after the initial outline. Then I moved to her luxuriant coat............. baddaboom. Do I build up with my lower 'B' pencils or do I go straight for the high 'b's softer yet darker lead. Interesting conundrum I decided the best course of action was to try both on a different sheet. The lowB build up and the high B flat out, yield similar visual results BUT and this is a big BUT, the softer lead  of a 7B pencil lifts right off the page if you touch it. So when I came back to my sample sheet after lunch I found a big ole finger print, my finger print in the middle of my 7B sample. Huh!! who'da thunk it? There you go. So lesson learned for a more stable permanent and dense mark on your paper, work it up. Your shadows will thank you:-)

So this is Star, my darker shades teacher. She is a 19 year old former feral kitty who currently resides in Virginia.

Extreme ear-tipping.

I went a got myself a new page in the title line works in progress. You can follow the evolution of portraits as they come to life. Star's story is my first entry.

Typhoon productions

I was busy, very busy all throughout the typhoon. It battered the bejaysus out of the house but we are still standing, functioning, leaking around the edges just a little but we are here all 7 of us. That is the 5 furbs and two humans.

Thankfully we didn't lose power so I literally sat in front of reference photos for the three days we were housebound. The good thing about all this sitting, drawing and captivity was that I made a huge indent on both my to experiment list and my commissions list.

Like anything you do in life, you gotta keep practicing to keep your skills up. So experimenting is power for the course. There is no point in telling you I was an accomplished pianist when I was 15 if I haven't laid fingers on a set of keys in almost 20 years.  BTW I wasn't that good but I don't think I could even manage Yankee Doodle now.

Anyway Typhoon sequestration saw me whittle down my order list and learn a few new things. These new things will appear over the next few weeks as some of them are still a secret. I'm pretty excited:-)

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