Self Portrait in coloured pencil

Wednesday 16 September 2015

A new Wolf



I enjoy drawing wolves. They are much easier than members of the cat family because their fur is coarser. I don't know if it is really coarser. Perhaps I should compare my dogs' hair with my cats' hair under a microscope. But I can certainly get away with a rougher drawing when I do a wolf. 
This is a 6x4 inch pen and ink drawing. The tongue and eyes are coloured using Caran d'Ache Luminance coloured pencils which are lightfast. 
I am now taking a break from pen and inks to finish a series of coloured pencil studies of the horse chestnut tree through the year. I started the series last year and I have a deadline of the 23rd of October when I want to display the group of drawings at a Craft Fair I am taking part in. 

Wednesday 2 September 2015

A quick update


I am still working hard on the portrait of a young man that I mentioned last time. It is taking time because it is a miniature and I have to keep taking breaks to refresh my eyes and make sure I have each feature in the right place and size correct to 0.33 mm, before I do the next bit. 
This cougar, in pen and ink with pencil shading and touches of coloured pencil, is the same size as the young man but of course it is not a portrait of a particular cougar so the accuracy doesn't matter so much! It was quick and relaxing to draw. 
I have been having fun today learning about sampling algorithms. I wanted to know the best way to change a tiff to a jpeg. I have so many options! I went for Lanczos 3 separable. I have the vaguest idea of what it means but I saved the cougar in three different types of sampling and decided that this looked best. That is the visual artist's method! I am concerned about it because the application I am using, uses these sampling types for printing and I have been struggling to get a good print of the horse's head I posted last time.