New work on the drawing board

I thought I would show how I set up my new works for drawing, I like to have a colour and black and white image to work from, the black and white image shows me tone and balance that I'm trying to achieve, the colour image shows the lights and fur direction better for me than the B/W image, I also use these sheets to rest my hand on to protect my work as I draw, I always work with mechanical pencils normally HB 2H 2B and sometimes 4B & 6B, the paper is Bristol Board or Mellowtex, I have a putty eraser which I very rarely use except for cleaning the tips of my pencils after sharpening, and the one thing I wouldn't be without is my ball of Blue Tack. Not sure if any one else is interested in any of this but it's sometimes interesting to see how other people work.

New WIP

Thought I would try something new today, now at the end of it I'm not to sure if that was a good idea! I've never tried snow before and when I saw this picture of a red fox sitting on a hillside in the snow I thought it would be an ideal subject to draw, now as Im say I'm not to sure, maybe after a few hours more work it may even look like snow!!!

Missy Finished

After approx 20 hours Missy is finished, I'm just waiting for the owners approval and she will be on her way to the USA. This like all drawings has generated it's own problems, but getting round those problems is part of the learning curve, and I've learnt a few more things about drawing with this one. Drawn on Bristol Board, Image size approx 5 x 4 inches. Thank you Teresa for giving me the opportunity to draw Missy.

Missy update

Just a little more work achieved today, still more to do on the right of the face, but happy with the smile!

Missy update

Due to a senior moment I haven't been able to get as far as I would of wished today with this drawing, this was due to leaving my glasses in my sons car, so some of the valuble drawing time was taken up by collecting the glasses from his home, any way after another 3 hours work mainly on the nose, and right side of the face I am left at this point, let hope tomorrow brings less problems.

Missy

Missy belongs to Teresa who I met on an art forum site, for some time she has been asking me to take part in the monthly ATC exchange, for one reason or another I just dont seem to get around to putting pencil to paper, so I asked if she would like me to draw a portrait of her Alsation cross Missy, its good practice for me, and I hope she is happy with the result, I'll post more as I go along, as always your comments are welcome.

Greyhound ''almost there''

Again a few more hours work today on this latest drawing, spent most of it working on the ear and the collar, the finished image would fit it to a frame of 4.5 x 4.5 inches, as Iv'e drawn this on the right hand side of a piece of A4 size Bristol Board I am thinking of filling in the left hand side with a few rabbits in a field, in such a way that it looks like they are being watched by the dog... watch this space as they say

Greyhound WIP

After approx 6 hours work this is what Iv'e managed to achieve on my new dog drawing, this grey and white greyhound looks ready to go, all he needs is a willing rabbit. I will post more in the next couple of days, all comments welcome as always.

Rotweiller

Another Dog portrait finished, this one of a Rotweiller measures approx 4 x 3.5 inches, with each drawing I feel that I am getting nearer to where I want to be with my drawings, I just wish I could master how to draw a white haired dog on white paper, all my efforts so far have ended up in the bin.....

Jack Russell Finished

Except for signing this drawing I consider it finished, from seeing him running around on the beach in Jersey to completion is just about 4 days, all I hope now is that the owners get in touch with me and give me his name. I hope you like him size is approx 5x4 inches drawn on Bristol board, using 2b, 2h, and Hb clutch pencils, and a fair amount of Blue Tack for the shading.

New WIP

I have posted this photograph of a Jack Russell I met whilst visiting my sister on the island of Jersey. he was enjoying a break from running around the beach at 100 miles an hour, he was full of life and I loved the way his left ear flopped over all the time, I asked if it was possible to photograph him and gave my blog address to the owners so they could see my attempt to capture him in graphite, my big mistake was not writting down his name, so if the owner happens to have a look please let me know his name. Thanks Grahame

German Shepherd

Drawn on Bristol Board approx size is 5x4 inches. I have wanted to draw a dog portrait for some time, so using a couple of great referance books Iv'e given it a go, I would still like to get a more realistic effect on the fur, but overall I'm pleased with the result.

Colobus Monkey finished ( for now)

Ive added another branch to balance the drawing, and at the moment I dont want to add any more to this, I think more branches would clutter the background, and shading it would make a mess, I may come back to this in the near future though.

Colobus Monkey

Ive really enjoyed this drawing, its one Iv'e had in my to do plans for a while, not sure how Im going to tackle the background, on the ref photo there are a lot of branches, I would use my artistic licence and chop some of them down, or do I just use differant shades of graphite to block out the white paper and try to make the monkey stand out?

African Painted Dogs

Just finished this large (for me) drawing of three Painted Wild Dogs, this is a montage of three photographs played about with on photoshop, to give me the bases for this drawing, the finished size is 10 x 5 inches. I watched a TV programme showing these dogs a few nights ago, and thought they would make a good drawing subject.

My Wife's first watercolour

As my wife doesnt have a blog I thought I would show this on mine. she has just started to try her hand at watercolour painting, she has had no training, and all her knowledge has come from reading books, in a former life she was a draughtswomen which still shows in the way she plans her pre drawing out. anyway I just thought I would publish this for her as I thinks it's a great first attempt and as always Im very proud of her.

Hummingbird

Not to happy with this one, but its done and I dont think that spending any more time on it will make me feel any better, so best to leave it as it is, its all experiance. finished size is approx 4 x 3.5 inches

Humming Bird WIP

A new WIP not sure how this one is going to turn out, I think I maybe should have cropped in a little tighter on the bird and left out more of the flowers etc, the bird itself is approx 1.5 inches square. not a good photographic reproduction so I hope further ones will be sharper.

Art Blog Award

I was very kindly and unexpectedly given an Art Blog Award by Teresa (thank you, Teresa!) who requests that I write seven things that I love and pass it on to seven other bloggers, sounds easier than you think, but here goes.

1. My Wife who is the love of my life.

2. My 3 Sons. Stepson and Stepdaughter

3. My Sisters and their families

4. Looking at great pieces of Art and wondering ''how did they do that''?

5. Being at a Pink Floyd concert and feeling the hairs on the back of my neck stand up)

6. Walking on the beach

7. Having a whole Malt Loaf to myself with cheese and pickled onions!!

Now the hard part picking seven other bloggers.

1.Tresses
2.Sheona
3.Nolon
4.Karie
5.Christine
6.Felicity
7.Sharon

Waiting for the Tide Revisited

I posted this drawing some time back, and the horizon has always been bugging me, it just didn't look finished off, so today I dug it out of my folder and added the distant rocks and Lighthouse, I also worked on soem of the shadows and edges, I feel a lot better now, it's often the case that if you come back to something after leaving it a while you see it with fresh eyes. let me know what you think.