Interesting times.

Looking back at the last couple of months I see . . . well . . . not much; here on my blog. I do, however, have an excuse. I've reached a crossroads; at long last I've made the decision that at some level I know I've needed to make for a while, to bin my printing and embroidery business (my primary source of employment and income). It's not a sensible choice but an inevitable one, under my managment the business was doomed to failure, once you find it impossible to motivate yourself to do more than 'just enough', and sometimes not even that, then it's time to roll the dice, to get out while the goings good, so that is what I'm doing. In the next few months I'll be busy with assisting the transition of the ongoing business to the new owner/operator but after that . . . well, there should be a bit more activity to be seen on the art front. The relief I feel at this is surprising, I'll be poor but able to take up opportunities that with a regular job would be impossible, interesting times indeed.

Anyway, in spite of that I have been doing more art than just farting around with sketching and my new pens, here's a couple of painting commissions I've completed in the last month or so:

Duke, soft pastels on 30 X 40cm yellow pastelmat.






Ruby, soft pastels on 35 X 50cm grey pastelmat.

Pens and pencils

Last week I got some new toys, a set of Copic multiliners. Drawing with pens is something I've been meaning to tackle for a while now, now I can have a crack at it with some decent pens rather than any old biro which has been the limit of my ink drawing equipment up till now.

Here's a few birds drawn with these, I'm rather enjoying drawing in ink, an interesting discipline.











In the last few days I've also made a start on doing some work based on my Antarctic trip, I'm planning quite a body of work on this subject so these graphite drawings are going to be the first of many.

Horses? Schmorses

Well....it was bound to happen one day, I've had an inquiry about doing a portrait of a horse. This is a subject I've shied away from in the past (fnar fnar) but I've been meaning to have a go at. This, of course, has given me the kick I needed to try it.

So I dug out a reference courtesy of the Artist Reference Photos facebook page and had a crack at my first ever horse painting.

   Horse 1, soft pastels on 30 X 40 cm yellow pastelmat.

Mollymawks

Ugh, pretty birds...still, customer's always right. Actually I enjoyed doing these two black browed albatross paintings. As ever soft pastels on 30 X 40 pastelmat.


Mollymawk 1. Looking beautiful on the nest, I liked the shapes that came out of this.

Mollymawk 2. This was a tougher proposition, an albatross doing something other than sitting on its nest looking noble. In flight wasn't really an option, I can't stand the appearance of albatross in gliding flight, they're just a bloody great black and white cross floating around in the painting, In my opinion they look a lot more interesting in the transition between flying and landing/taking off. So I assembled this montage of several references and a good dollop of imagination:

The young hawk

Just completed the second of my 'close up' paintings. This is a young red-backed hawk, whilst thinking about how this would work I got caught up with the idea of a flowing shape created from the lie of his feathers, the eye and is the focal point and the beak a hard element that breaks out of the softenss of the curve.

Reference photo:

Finished painting:

Feeling a bit chuffed with the 'flowing curve' idea when it occured to me that I'd seen this before...and I had, months ago in a doodle I'd done whilst talking to someone on the phone, funny how your mind works isn't it. I'd forgotten about this but the idea must have still been in there somewhere.

Doodle:

Extreme close up

I've been meaning for a while to do a series of pastels extreme close up images, not necessarily very small things but just a close look, the lichen on an old, weathered gate post, a rusty iron hinge, the feathers on a birds wing....that sort of thing. Some references will be photos that have been cropped to death, some will be still life, some macro photographs.

So I had a crack at one this evening, this is based on a photo of a rockhopper penguin, cropped until there's nothing except his eye and part of his beak and brow (I know I said I wouldn't do penguins but I've weakened).

For this I used mostly my conte (softish) pastels, just finished off the highlights & shadows with schminke pastels to get a bit more intensity. Support is 24 X 30 pastelmat in my favourite colour, anthracite. On the whole I don't blend much and in this painting I did none at all, also (and unusually for me) I didn't fix at all during the painting, bit of a departure for me this is.

Foden the Huntaway

This is a commissioned portrait of Foden, a favourite huntaway belonging to a friend of mine (named after his favourite truck!). This is the first time I've done a dog portrait that's not just a headshot, I'm reasonably pleased with it. Must try some of dogs running and such.

Foden, soft pastels on 30 X 40cm pale grey pastelmat.

 

Bruce

This is a commission I had a few months ago, to start with I thought it was just another dog portrait but it turned out that the customer wanted other specific elements, foreground is a headshot of the Huntaway Bruce, fair enough but that had to be applied to a background of a location and a flock of sheep AND a shepherd (the owner of Bruce). This was something new as I'd never tried to combine elements like this before, in the end I had to omit the shepherd, it was just too much going on and I couldn't make it work. Here are the reference pics I had to work with:

Bruce

Sheep

Background (& shepherd on his quad bike)

Clearly this wasn't going to be just a portrait, it was a combination of portrait and landscape...and I don't much like doing landscapes, way too tricky. Anyway I messed around with a few compositions and in the end  the most obvious worked the best:

Composition sketch:

On the strength of this rather crude drawing I got the go ahead. I opted for charcoal and soft pastels (surprise surprise) on 30 X 40 cartridge paper.

Charcoal sketch, Bruce's head:

Completed sketch:

Some colour thrown in:

Finished:

I found this to be quite a challenge and was quite pleased with the result. The client was delighted with it when she got it and then threw another idea at me, something much, much tougher altogether, watch this space.....

Haven't been here for a while

Cor! Five months since I last posted, where does the time go?

Well for the last seven weeks I've had my arm in a sling after I managed to dislocate my shoulder (it had to be my right arm of course...doh!), happily it's healing well now and I've been (carefully) doing some drawing again. Here's a few pieces I'd got done before my injury:

First of all some commissions, there's a couple more but I'm going to post them individually:

Joey the lab, charcoal & pastels on 30 X 40 cartridge paper.

A set of two individual pastel portraits of a friends children, also one coloured pencil portrait of both together:

......and a couple I did as Christmas presents:

Tealeaf the lurcher, charcoal.

Ruby, my youngest niece, charcoal

Bump!

Still here, Had a bit of a dry spell but recently been working on some commissions and such. What's good is that I'm getting paid for them, what's bad is they're all gifts, so I can't show any of them yet.

Still all dry media of course, charcoal and pastels. Here's an idea I'm playing with: Boom the dog backlit on wet sand, just liked the look of the reflections:

ref photo

Sketch, Charcoal & pastel

Finished them.

Finished my 'fighting johnnyrooks' painting, here it is with the 'angry johnnyrook':

Not being much of a photographer both of these are composed from multiple reference photos, recently I got some decent shots of a johnnyrook on the wing which I'd not managed before. Might do a third picture in this set based on this photo:

Could be fun.

Fighting Johnnyrooks

This is (I hope) going to be a piece that compliments my angry johnnyrook picture, if it works both of these are to be donated for an auction at an annual social event called the Conservation Ball, this is held to raise money for the local environmental charity Falklands Conservation. Here's a link to their website if you're interested

This is a subject composed using many shots of Johhnyrooks doing their stuff, they do fight quite a lot but they're so quick moving that I've never managed to get one good shot of the action I wanted to portray. Soft pastels on 30 X 40 yellow pastelmat.

Initail work showing the sketch and my (I think, rather nifty) monitor setup.

First stage, blocking out of basic shapes.

Some depth of colour added

More colour, movment and detail, colours are very brash so still a long way to go.

I'm back

Well, my studio is set up (well....it's a spare bedroom that I've taken over), my home made easel works tolerably well so everythings going OK. Here's a couple of pastel pictures on 30 X 40 pastelmat that I've done in the last couple of days.  
In doing these I took a bit of advice from Harley Brown in his book 'Eternal truths for every artist' that made a lot of sense to me "Show the paper who's the boss" meaning just break up the surface with big pastel strokes, no particular form or colour just mess up the surface. I found this gave me a much looser approach than my usual method of working on top of an accurate sketch, good fun.

Angry Johnnyrook, orange pastelmat.

..and Johnny cash....also looking quite angry, grey pastelmat.
Work in progress of this is on the 'on the easel' page

Johnnyrook 2

Well....things are moving on, been working on a couple of commissions now but they're a surprise gift so can't tell show 'em yet. Yet another bout of insomnia this morning so had another crack at that great character the straited caracara AKA johnnyrook. Charcoal, A3.

Luca the keen Collie

Feeling a bit low so indulged myself by doing a pair of 'recently deceased' portraits. Luca was an 11 year old border collie who belonged to my brother and his wife, he had been suffering terribly with joint problems and was recently put down. A great character, destroyer of toys, escape artist, and all round entertainer.

Both are soft pastels on A3 pastel paper.

Rest in peace Luka.

Red Backed Hawk

Juvenile Red Backed Hawk, also called the Variable Hawk due to the many variations of plumage it can have. He was just landing in the ref for this. I rather liked the rich colours in this variation, on the ground he was a bit awkward but this shot caught him rather well. Soft Pastels on white 30 X 40 pastelmat.

I find birds difficult but was quite pleased with this one, must practice more.

Johnnyrook

Also did this quick study of a johnnyrook (striated caracara) last night, he's a rare, very inquisitive raptor that is actually quite common here in the Falklands. They are pretty mad, jittery creatures so I wanted lots of movement to be apparent, didn't quite work as I wanted so may have another go at this idea. Pastels on 24X30 yellow pastelmat.

Busy day

Started three pictures today, a portrait of my brother Adam in soft pastels, still from the movie LA Confidential in soft pastels and a drawing of our other dog Jill in coloured pencils.
Finished Jill this evening along with another painting I'd started last week....Phew!


This is the painting I finished this evening, Giant petrels (local name: Stinkers) fighting over carrion in the water, soft pastels on 30X40 pastelmat. Not particularly pleased with this, it did what I wanted it to, just not that happy with the look of the birds...more practice.

Our black, short haired border collie Jill. This is her 'glum' look (just been shut into the pack of the pickup with Boom, she loves being out but hates travelling, especially with that barking oaf). Polychronos coloured pencils & black sketching pencil on A4 cartridge paper.

General Jackson

My Dads basset hound, polychronos coloured pencils on white cartridge pad.
Interesting going back to coloured pencils after working with pastels for a while, oddly reassuring in some way even though they impose far more limits than pastels. It's noticable how you cannot get the quick results with this medium compared to pastels as well, you've got to work at it with pencils. This little drawing took over 2 hours.


Unlike work I've done before this came out exactly as I imagined it would. Working on this has emphasised, for me, the value of short pencil strokes and patience when trying to achieve a nice 'fur' look.