Highly Commended Award

My Silverback 'Rainforest Dreaming' won a Highly Commended award at the UKCPS 2010 Annual Exhibition, which of course I am extremely pleased about.

Below, is a photo taken at the exhibition showing how he looks all framed and displayed.

UKCPS 2010 Annual Exhibition

I was very pleased to have both my submitted pictures accepted for the 2010 UKCPS exhibition.

They are the Amur Leopard and the Silverback Gorilla. Now all I have to do is get them to Stamford. I wish I could get to the exhibition to see all the finalists in real life but it will be too far for me to get there. I look forward to seeing them all online.

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.

The Likely Lads

This is my latest. I really struggled to maintain my interest, but I got there in the end. I so didnt want to spoil it by rushing it.

Tinted Charcoal on Pastelmat. Size approx A3.

Sunny Meadows

I started this one some time back, but abandoned it as I could see it wasn't really working that well. It was suggested that I crop it,  I liked the bottom left corner (thanks Pauline). After thinking about it for awhile, that's what I did. I decided where I wanted the image to finish and this is it. I am putting up the first attempt to show why I didn't like it and then the cropped image.

I used coloured pencil dissolved with a  low odour solvent (Pauline's method) on a yellow pastelmat.

The first one is approximately A3 in size the final is cropped down to 11" x 6.5".

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.