Image of the Week

Saffy is my choice for this weeks image. She is a lovely, happy, Springer Spaniel who is forever on the go, just like all Springers. They really seem to enjoy life.

Pastels on Mountboard. Size 20" x 16".

Leopard in Pastel

I haven't thought of a title for this chap yet, my head has not been in the right place for titles this week.

I liked the pose and the fact that he had his mouth open. I am not entirely sure I have the eye quite right, will need to go back to it later.

Size 16" x 12"

Support Clairefontein Pastelmat in maize

Medium: various makes of pastel pencils and Ashby soft pastel sticks.

A Few More Birds

Thought I would post up a few more of the birds I am currently working on, I have completed around 25, but wont post them all, they may get a little too much. There are 44 in all.

They are all watercolours and are done on an A5 piece of paper so not too large, but big enough to get the detail needed to recognise the bird, without going over the top.

 Whitethroat

 Little Greebe

 Lapwing

 Widgeon

Teal

Time Out

A quick one, for me. It took me about 5 hours and was a new experience, I was trying to work in a looser style and started out with an abstract in mind, but as usual my love of realism got in the way. But I am happy with how it has turned out.

Size: 18" x 6"

Support: Fabrianno Clasico HP

Medium: Watercolour paint, Faber Castel Polychromos coloured pencils and Derwent water soluble cp.

Rose and Tango

I think this will be the last post until I have finished. Just Tango's head and the background to do now. I am leaving the head for tomorrow morning when I am fresh....I will need to concentrate for the bits and bridle.

 A little more done, not too much more to do, just the most dificult part, the bridle and bits etc, I will need a very, very sharp pencil to get nice crisp lines. I think that part will take a fair amount of time. I am looking forward to doing the head though.

A small update....not too much to show for 3 hours work, I spent most of it adding  more detail, veins and muscles and layering in darker tones etc.

At last I have something to post. It's been way too long since I last had a pencil in my hand.

This is a commission for a friend, Rose and her and her beautiful horse Tango, bought by a group of her friends for her birthday. (The portrait, not the horse.)

The photo was taken by her partner Jon.  http://www.jonsucksmithphotography.co.uk/index.html

It measures roughly 16" x 12". 

Pencils: Faber Castell Polychromos

Support: Fabrianno Artistico HP.

Around 5 hours of work so far. The scan is not great, but the colours are fairly accurate.

What? Where?

I have just completed my little group of meerkats in time for the Illminster exhibition 'Diversity' which is being held at the Meeting House in Illminster from the 6th to 18th September together with Pauline Longley and Diana Connor. If you are in the area then please pop in, we would love to see you. I will be showing my wildlife drawings in graphite, coloured pencils and pastels.

I find these little chaps so engaging and amusing. I had some reference photos of them and grouped them together to make a panoramic composition which I think works well. I used graphite again for this one....I seem to be on a graphite kick at the moment. The paper I used is Mellotex ultra white and the size is 20" x 9" so each individual is fairly small.

Mother Protector

Just for you Janet, this is how the picture looks now it's framed. I had this frame already and couldn't find any of my existing pictures to put in it, with the very heavy black frame, they just didn't look right. I sort of did the elephant with the frame in mind. I have not used a mount. I think that the white paper works just as well. (the greyish area around the frame is my kitchen wall, not part of the frame).

Here it is all finished with a dusty background. The background is not what I set out to do at the start, but it took over from what I had in mind so I went with the flow and this is what I ended up with. I don't fight with my instinctive drawing, and I am sometimes pleasantly surprised with what can happen. I think that if I had done what I originally wanted it would have looked too dominant and perhaps not worked at all. I am happy with the result.

 'Mother Protector'

This is my latest, done in graphite for a change. It is not completely finished yet. I am planning a background, a very simple one, based on light rather than detail. I am not completely confident I can pull it off, so thought I would show you what I have done so far in case I mess it up!!

I have a frame for it and if I complete it successfully I will hang it in our 'Diversity' exhibition in Illminster in September.

Size: Approx A3

Paper: Mellotex ultra white

Pencils 3B mechanical, HB 0.5 mechanical and 7B woody for the very dark darks.

Looking Back - over my shoulder

This is what I have been working on the last couple of days.....I just cant keep away from the animals...hoo boy!

 I found some old sheets of Velour paper in the bottom of my cupboard and thought I would use them up. This is the first of them, done on black velour, size approx A4, using a variety of pastels from sticks to pencils, all different brands, whichever seemed to work best. I am still not sure if I like velour...which is probably why it ended up in the bottom of the cupboard.

Low Tide

Here is another pastel piece which I completed this morning. I am enjoying the speed which I can do these landscapes, It usually take me weeks to do a wildlife picture. I may do a few more of these before going on to something else....or perhaps I will go onto some elephant in acrylics that I have half done ....I will see how the mood takes me next week. I used a yellow pastelmat for this one, must say I am not keen, I much prefer the Fisher 400 for pastels, which takes loads of layers and also takes both pastel sticks and pastel pencils equally well, so ideal for my style.

Size approx A3

Third Little Bird

Well, I finally got around to finishing the third in my set of little birds. They are very small but do look nice in their frames. I will take a photo of them framed when the light is better and post it. I decided to scrap the kingfisher I was going to do and settled on a little blue tit. I do love these cheeky little chaps.

Silverback Gorilla

I have just completed this wonderful boy. He is a large silverback who lives at Bristol Zoo. He was so laid back and relaxed it was easy to take a good photograph of him as he sat in the sun surveying his space. I  wondered if he was thinking of his natural habitat, the rainforest of the Congo? With this in mind, I titled it 'Rainforest Dreamin'. 

It will be one of my entries into the UKCPS annual exhibition.

Size: 13" x 13"

Support: Fabrianno Artistico

Medium: Derwent's new watersoluble coloured pencils.

I think there must be at least 5 million pencil strokes for the fur...just guessing, I didn't count, but it sure felt like it. LOL

Spotted - Amur Leopard

Over the last month I have been working on this beautiful Amur Leopard. I was very lucky to get this shot of him in the only patch of sunlight there was in his enclosure. He lives at Cricket St Thomas Wildlife park, (I have just read that in fact the leopards will be going from here as will all the other large animals, sad as this was a good place for me to get reference photos for my art). I had no idea that this species of Leopard is so critically endangered. There are only 32 animals alive in the wild and 200 in captivity, where their gene pool is getting dangerously small.

The picture is A3 in size and I used mostly Faber-Castell Polychromos pencils with a few of the old Karisma pencils. The support is Clairefontaine Pastelmat in pale yellow.

Coloured pencil Rhino finished

This is the completed drawing of the Rhino. I have titled it 'Heavyweight'. The background is merely suggested as I didn't want it to compete with the animal, yet still wanted to convey the dust and heat of Africa.

'Heavyweight'

Size 21.5 x 29.5cms
Watersoluble coloured pencils

Fabrianno Artistico hot press paper

Rhino in watersoluble coloured pencil.

Over the holidays I have been taking some time out to draw something for myself and decided to try out some of Derwent's new watersoluble pencils I bought at the NEC in November. I am surprised to find I really like them, up to now I have not liked watersolubles, but these work well.

First I lay down a very light layer of dry colour pencil, and then dissolved the colour using one of those water brush thingys....stops me flooding everything with water as I usually do. This is the early stage.

Then I worked over this base colour using dry pencil , building up tone and colour and adding in the wrinkles and skin textures. Here I am almost complete. I am hoping to finish it later today and will post the results.

Ring-tailed Lemurs in Coloured Pencil 38 x 15cm

This WIP was commissioned by a well known magazine. Disappointingly, due to a change of Editor it will now not be used. So I post it on my blog for you to see how I produce a detailed coloured pencil painting of a couple of ring-tailed lemurs. Enjoy!

Drawing animals with coloured pencil is challenging but very rewarding, and allows the artist to achieve high levels of detail and realism. Patience is required to develop the texture and colour of fur which is essential for capturing the essence and character of the animals you are depicting; whether you are drawing your own pets or the more exotic species from around the world.

My tools and materials
Fabrianno Artistico hp paper 300gsm
Faber-Castell Polychromos and Berol Karisma coloured pencils
Derwent embossing tool
Blu Tack
3B graphite pencil
Scalpel for sharpening pencils. It is important to keep a sharp point on your pencils when drawing fur.

Stage 1: Indenting

After transferring a fairly detailed pencil sketch of my subjects onto my paper and before laying down any colour, I use the embossing tool to indent what will be the longer soft fur around the ears and the shorter fur across the top of the lemur’s heads, which I want to keep a crisp white against what will be a dark green background. I find indenting is an easier method to establish white hair against dark than negative drawing. I start on the background first. Using indigo, yellow ochre and three greens, deep cobalt green, chrome oxide green and permanent green olive, I layer the colours to get a dappled leafy feel. I don’t want any pencil marks showing and use a circular motion, never pressing too hard, layering the colours until all the white paper is covered. The lines which were indented into the paper will stay white.

Stage 2: Laying down colour

Now the fun part begins. I always work from left to right and keep a sheet of clean white paper to rest my hand on, which stops me smudging the outline sketch of the subject, or getting the natural oils from my hand onto the paper, which can effect the way coloured pencil ‘takes’ to the paper.

For the texture of the shorter fur on the top of the head, I ‘flick’ the pencil in short strokes in an upward movement, using different colours placed next to each other, building up the marks to get the thickness of the fur. Vary the direction of these strokes a little throughout the area to avoid a regimented look to the fur, and use more strokes in areas which are darker or in shadow. I use the white of the paper between the coloured strokes to suggest light reflecting off each hair. Fur often appears to be made up of many different colours and here I used mauve, indigo, grey and a lovely dark reddish brown called caput mortuum.

The inner ear of these animals is very dark and again, before using any colour, I have indented a few curved lines which will show the fine white hair overlapping the black skin. After completing the ear I used Blu Tack pinched to a sharp edge to lift out more soft hair from the black inner ear. Using Blue tack to lift colour is an excellent way of lightening areas which you may have overworked, or where you need a lighter area.

Progress made.

Stage 3. Working on the eyes.

Moving on to the eyes. It’s important to get the eyes correct, as mistakes here can ruin your picture. I want to get the wet, glassy look of the eye and so I keep in mind that it is essentially a round object, like a marble. If the light comes in from above the subject it will often cause a lightening of colour at the bottom of the iris and will also create a clearer highlight towards the top of the iris. If a flash has been used when photographing the subject, the highlight will be small and crisp, and I would suggest that you change this in your drawing to something softer to create realism. Studying images of animal eyes will soon help you get to grips with them.

I start by laying down the lightest colour, yellow ochre, all over the iris, but make sure I leave the area where I want the highlight to be. Over the yellow ochre I layer venetian red, burnt sienna and pumpkin orange; once again leaving the highlight white. I darken the area around the very edge of the iris using walnut brown to create the rounded shape of the eye and then lift some of the colour from a small area at the bottom of the eye using Blu Tack, which creates a secondary slightly darker highlight. I soften the edges of the bright upper highlight and finally darken the pupil with a dark brown and a little black. Moving on to the skin immediately around the eye, I use indigo, caput mortuum and black, with smooth strokes of colour. Again I lift out some of the colour to create shape and form.

I can now move on to the nose and mouth. Using mostly indigo with a small amount of caput mortuum and mauve and carefully following the contours of the nose and muzzle using smooth layers of colours, I gradually build up the darker tones as I go, adding a little black inside the nostrils. Always follow the natural curves of muscle and bone structure of the animal with your pencil strokes to get a believable look, obvious pencil marks running against the underlying structure will ruin all your hard work.

A close up view of the eye.

Stage 4: Ring-tailed lemurs completed

After completing the eyes, nose and mouth, I continue putting on colour using very short strokes for the fur on the faces and work around the drawing until I feel that I have gone as far as I can then I put the drawing aside for a day or two. Coming back to it later and looking at it with a critical eye, I see there are some small final adjustments and tweaks that need doing. In this case I darken some of the shadows under the lemur’s chins to add definition and depth. I add a little more texture to the fur under the eyes and some more colour to the tail fur (bottom right corner) making the fur a little more realistic. Last of all I carefully add the whiskers.

The Completed painting.