More Work in Progress

More Work in Progress 

Building the kitchen cupboards tired me more than I expected. I am still having afternoon naps so I haven’t been able to work on Bentley as much as I thought I would. But I am getting on well with the work I have done. His nose now has texture, dark hairs are positioned in his fur and I have started on his muzzle. I don’t use black. I used sepia overlaid with dark grey. 

I need to touch in lots of white hairs. He doesn’t really have those dark lines over his nose. They mark the shadows of the cute little puppy folds of skin. Once I have dragged some white, light grey and light beige fur over them they will look like folds and not stripes. 

First I am going to lay some pink skin on his muzzle. Then I will get out the white paint and work over all the fur on his nose to get the shading right. 

Latest Work in Progress

Latest Work in Progress

It is nice to get back to this portrait of Bentley in acryl gouache. The photo is of a small area to show how much more work I have to do to finish. If I show the full image you would think it is nearly finished but the minute I sat down and looked at it I could see that I still have a lot to do. 

When I am working in acryl gouache I use very small spotter brushes and lay the strokes of paint one at a time in layers. You can see a medium grey at the bottom right waiting for strokes of sepia and dark grey to build up the effect of fur. The difficulty is where there are white hairs lying over dark hair. 

Acryl gouache is lovely to work with because the paint doesn’t dry hard for a few days so mistakes can be lifted. Also it is opaque which means that I will be able to layer clean white hairs over the dark areas.

The nose is a completely different kind of texture. I expect that the spotter brush will live up to its name when I get there!

I should mention that the strip of white thick paper is to rest my hand on to protect the paint from grease.

Work in Progress: Young Wolf 2

Work in Progress: Young Wolf 2

I took the above photo yesterday and then I started drawing again instead of writing this artblog. So there is quite a lot more of him done since then. 

I have been struggling to get the texture of his fur right. The reference photo was taken back in  November 1999 on film, so it doesn’t have the detail that I can take today even with my phone! 

I have been going over his head again and again, lifting off dots of the graphite pencil with a kneadable eraser, then re-applying using a 2H mechanical pencil trying to get the impression of soft fur with flecks of highlights. 

I so want to get back to this drawing that I will stop writing now. Watch out for an update. 

Boots the Deerhound 4

Boots the Deerhound 4

I have finished Boots’ ear and eye. 

If you disagree it is because I still need to sort out his fur. His ear will look better when I have finished painting the fur on his neck, and as for his eye, I couldn’t see it in the reference photo because of the way a deerhound’s fur grows. I used Bryn as an eye model. One of her parents was a wolfhound so I thought her eyes should be roughly in the right place. She isn’t a great model. It worries her when I want her to turn her head sideways so I can see her eye in profile but I got there. Now I need to add Boots’ curly eyebrow. 

You can see the curls on his head against the dark hedge. I painted them in pastel pencils in shades of grey. I am enjoying working in pastel so much. I still struggle to hold pastel sticks so I have been experimenting with different brands of pastel pencils. 

I bought a box of Derwent pastel pencils 2 years ago but I found them a bit hard and they shatter inside when I drop them.

I hunted out pastel pencils that I bought many years ago like Bruynzeel, and bought some new ones in green and grey. They are quite nice. And I bought some new Faber Castell pastel pencils and I liked those ones so much that I bought a tin of the complete range. 

Looking on line for the pastels I discovered that Caran d’Ache make pastel pencils too. So I bought 3 to try. And I loved them. They are go on so softly and the colour is dense enough to cover the underneath painting. So I bought a box of the full range of 84. I thought about it for a few days because the box was a lot of money! But now I have them I know that they’re worth every penny. 

The Caran d’Ache pencil box is safe in the drawer of my new painting table. The tin of Faber Castell ones is on the top in danger of being sat on. See below. 

I must say a word about sharpening the pencils. I bought a selection of pencil sharpeners. Success with them depends on the quality of the wood casing of the pencil. It varies from pencil to pencil so it is safest to use a craft knife. 

Caran d’Ache make a pastel pencil sharpener that looks like a miniature potato peeler. I will buy one some day. I am curious about how it would 

Boots the Deerhound 3

 Boots the Deerhound 3

I had a number of visitors last week so the portrait of Boots is not as far along as I would like. At the same time using my pastel pencils is so much fun that when I did manage to sit at my easel I was working with enthusiasm and able to work for longer than I could with the oil paints. 

Remember from my last post that I primed the oil painting with Art Spectrum primer in clear so the painting showed through. I didn’t have to start from scratch. 

I have continued working on his back and side and I am feeling pleased that I am getting a nice soft fur texture that shows the rough coat of a deerhound. Boots isn’t wire haired. I think that would be harder to paint. 

Today I sprayed the work I had done with fixative. I was getting pastel on my hand when I rested it on the surface so I thought I had better do something about it before it got smudged. 

Tomorrow I am going to start on his head. 

I bought some Inktense coloured pencils to embellish the pencil drawings that I am working on to show at the Craft Fair on the 19th and 20th of October. So I added a couple of Faber Castell pastel pencils. I hadn’t tried them before. I was so impressed that I have ordered the whole range of 60 colours. They may arrive tomorrow. 

I am also working on Bentley, and on my pencil drawing of a wolf that I met and fell in love with, when he was 6 months old. I will tell that story after I finish the drawing.

Boots

Boots

Boots is a beautiful Deerhound. I am painting him in water mixable oils on canvas using Payne’s Grey and white, warmed with a hint of sepia. 

I am not sure about the shape of Boots’ eye. In my reference photo his eye is bleached out by reflected light. In fact at one time I was wondering if he had a visible eye at all. This is one of those times that I am very glad that I have dogs who often cooperate to help me work out canine anatomy. Bryn is a cross bred Wolfhound so I am going to ask her to hold her head in the right position.

This time next week my exhibition "Gypsy Portraits, Changing Expectations" will be on view at St Lawrence’s Church, Appleby-in-Westmorland during this year’s Appleby Horse Fair.  

I am still busy finishing portraits. So I will get back to the easel now. 

Baby Has Eyes

Baby Has Eyes

I have been working hard painting this week. I spend about an hour on each portrait then I put them on the shelf to dry. 

I have changed my favourite brand of paint to Talens Rembrandt oil colours. I bought a selection of them and discovered that a very good cool skin tone is brown ochre mixed with lots of white, and a touch of light red oxide for rosy cheeks. My original selection didn’t include raw umber, so I ordered that, and some transparent oxide brown to try out.

Once I had the raw umber I was able to paint the baby’s eyes. They are a hazel brown and the rest of my browns were reddish. No good at all!

His eyes aren’t quite in the right place because I couldn’t rest my hand on the painting to do them - the paint was wet.

I would get more done (maybe) if I didn’t spend a lot of time picking tiny cat hairs out of the paint. I have tried tweezers but I can’t find any precise enough. I sometimes manage to scrape them off with a small palette knife if I find them before they are embedded in the paint.

Does anyone know a good solution? 

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Obstacles

Obstacles

It has been another difficult week. 

There is a belief that when one tries to do something valuable or important, obstacles arise. 

I thought that my badly bruised knee was bad enough but it has not healed as quickly as I expected because of misbehaving cats. 

Life normally has a gentle routine of painting and drawing during the day, interspersed with taking care of the animals. I have two dogs and three cats. 

The dogs are well behaved except when our friend Annette, visits. Then it is playtime and treat time. Annette thinks they are badly behaved with visitors but they know she is the only person with a pocket full of treats. 

Cat number one, Pumpkin, is best described as a "gentleman". He has impeccable manners and has the run of the house. I don't let him out. He is old now 

Cat number two, Fliss, is in the photo above with Bryn. I had her from a kitten and taught her to pay attention to me but I don't trust her to be left loose unsupervised, so she is shut in the spare room when I am working and at night.

Cat number three, Jet, is a rescue. He is feisty. He is opinionated. He has teeth and claws and is willing to use them. I can't work with him around. He sits on anything I am doing. This week he decided he will go to bed when he wants to and I have been kept busy stroking him for hours which has been stressful for my knee. And tiring. I have been getting to bed very late and I haven't got much work done. 

Last night Jet refused to be put to bed at all. I don't know where he decided to sleep eventually. He certainly spent hours outside my bedroom door making strange noises. As I expected, when I got up he was desperate for the litter tray which is in the spare room. He was probably very hungry too. I took the opportunity to shut him in for the day. 

Fliss was loose in the studio today. She was interested in the palette of oil paint. I was interested in keeping her tail out of the paint but I did get some work done. I had to scrape some cat hair off the painting. Luckily it wasn't a delicate piece of brushwork. 

This week I bought myself two more ceramic palettes with lids so I could work on three paintings at once. I like ceramic palettes more than any other kind. The paint doesn't dry so quickly or hard on them and they are very easy to clean. They each live in their own air tight food storage box. These boxes are also cat proof. 

Next Friday is the Private View of the Dufton "Art in the Hills" exhibition so I will be late writing my blog. I will take photos. The three portraits that I am struggling to finish despite knee and cats are to be in the exhibition. I have to finish them by Wednesday morning when a fellow exhibitor (and good friend) will pick them up from me to deliver them to the Dufton village hall.