Yawning Cub WiP

Yawning Cub, Work in Progress

My latest pencil drawing is a cub yawning as s/he comes out of the den in the morning light. I am using a 2H lead in a mechanical pencil on graphic film. Maybe that is why the 2H comes out so black compared to drawing on paper. I like the smoothness of graphic film and the fact that it doesn’t buckle if it gets damp. As graphic film is translucent, I often colour the drawing on the reverse. If I do it on the reverse of the Yawning Cub, it might solve the problem of colouring the roof of the den. But at the moment I am challenging myself to do it in graphite pencil. 

I have had another challenge this week. I was blending pastel skies and distant hills. I was working on canvas primed with clear Colourfix. (Colourfix is brilliant for mixed media and I am using it to underpaint and sketch portraits in oils.) Colourfix is gritty which is why it holds the pastels. 

Many artists work with pastel on a sandy textured surface but in the past I always worked on Canson Mi-Teintes paper. But the paper absorbs water and buckles which is the main reason that I started working on graphic film. I wonder if I can prime graphic film with Colourfix? I will try it some time. 

Anyway to get back to the gritty surface on the canvas, I was blending the pastel with my finger and it got very red and sore. The next day I used another finger to blend pastel on the next 2 portraits and that finger got very sore. The next day I sacrificed a third finger on a big painting of a boy on his horse. 

After that I decided to preserve my forefinger and look for a solution so I searched for Colour Shapers online. I believe that they are made of silicone. I ordered 2 in finger sizes and another silicone blender which looks good for large areas. 

Time will tell. Today I drew, and did some oil painting. 

I also took Jasper for a walk. We have been kept in by the bad weather and he was beginning to go stir-crazy. Dogs are so valuable to get artists away from the easel and into the fresh air. 

Here are the silicone blenders. The black one is harder than the light grey. I don’t know which is best. 

Portrait of Young Wolf Finished

Portrait of Young Wolf Finished

I have finished the portrait of the young wolf. The actual drawing took me 47 hours although, as I took the photo in November 1999 you could say it took me 19 years.

When I met this lovely wolf he was 6 months old and he was being held on a lead. I was so honoured that he liked me. He took hold of my wrist very gently in his mouth. It was the highlight of my life. After he was put back into the enclosure with the other wolves he kept jumping against the wire mesh fencing towards me and I got splattered with mud all over my jacket from the wolf enclosure. The result was that when I got home next day my own dog wouldn’t come near me! It was quite a while before the smell wore off my jacket and Trixie got back to normal. 

Back in those days, I had an SLR camera and I had to wait for the film to be developed before I knew if I had any reasonable photos. I tried to paint a portrait in pastel from the above pose but it coincided with the time I went down with post-polio syndrome and I had to give up artwork altogether for a while. 

I have always wanted to get back to doing a portrait from this photo, but it got put away in such a safe place that I couldn’t find it! When I did find it I looked at it and thought how soft focus it is compared to the sharp, see-every-hair photos that I can take with my latest DSLR. It was hard to see his hind feet because they were the same colour as the autumn leaves that he was standing in. That is why the drawing took so long. I did my best. Such a darling animal merited it. 

Because of the poor quality of the photo, I chose to draw a small portrait in graphite using mechanical pencils with different grades of lead from 2B to 3H. I draw on graphic film because it is “dimensionally stable” or, to put it another way, it stays flat in a humid atmosphere. The Eden Valley, where I live, is frequently humid. In fact I remember one day I was out in the rain and there wasn’t a single cloud in the sky. 

I have two more photos of the wolf that I would like to use as reference for portraits. In one he is lying in the dead leaves so I will have to do that one in colour. Maybe coloured pencils?

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. 

Work in Progress: Young Wolf

Work in Progress: Young Wolf

It is a long time since I took the photos of this young wolf. He was 6 months old at the time and absolutely delightful. I started his portrait in pastel at the time but then post polio syndrome hit me and I wasn’t able to continue. It was a few years before I recovered sufficiently to take up drawing again. 

But I have always wanted to do this portrait and have started a couple of attempts at it. Now I am determined to draw him at last. 

I am drawing him in mechanical pencil on graphic film as part of a series for an exhibition. As these drawings are small, I can draw sitting on the sofa of an evening. The only extra equipment that I need is something to quickly protect the current drawing from any cat who suddenly decides that they want to jump onto my lap. I bought a pad in a plastic folder that has 5 extra pockets to hold future drawings ready set up. 

I started this drawing a while ago. I had been using a 4B clutch pencil and, now that I have picked it up again, I see that I had made it too dark. So I have been working hard with putty rubber and the Tombow MONO zero eraser and I am happy now with the ear on the left and nearly happy with the top of his head. I drew Jasper’s portrait mainly with a 0.3 2B mechanical pencil and a 0.3 2H mechanical pencil on the “white” areas, so I am blending in the erased areas of this wolf portrait with the 0.3 2H mechanical pencil. 

The portrait of Jasper is finished but I haven’t scanned it yet. 

My last blog showed a photo of my dreadful tiling. I spent Christmas, with much appreciated help from my son, building a kitchen unit and moving furniture upstairs and downstairs. My kitchen is already working better for me though there are still problems to solve. One is the door to the unit. I found the door took up too much room when it was open and also I had trouble with the hinges. I am thinking of sawing the door in half vertically and hinging it so it will be a bifold door. 

The point of the unit is to hold the cat litter trays away from the dogs. The cats are happy with it so that is promising. The top shelf is holding the cat food and a spare bag of cat litter so it is looking promising. 

It would have been nice to start the New Year with everything organised. But it is much easier to cook my dinner in there and that is great. I was so tired of living on sandwiches!

And you can’t see how bad the tiling is. 

(See Fliss in the cardboard box rather than one of the beds! Typical cat.)

Drawing of Bryn Finished

 

Portrait Drawing of Bryn

I finished the portrait drawing of Bryn some time ago and immediately became involved in new exciting projects. And not so exciting problems to solve. So I just now posting the finished result. 

I am calling the portrait of Bryn "Elegance". I once had another dog, a crossbred boxer, who had a similar queenly demeanour. But Juno wasn't able to curl up into such a small neat space with her chin resting on her back. Bryn is such a feminine dainty soul who takes a great interest in hair styles (mine) and manicures (hers). She tells Jasper to stand in the corner while I vacuum, and she keeps the cats in order. She is 14 now and I am making the most of every day I still have her. This is why I wanted to commemorate her in this portrait. 

I worked the portrait in graphite pencil on Bristol board. I used mechanical pencils that have a good grip area for great control. But it still took me 57 hours to get that degree of detail. 

The main problem that I have to find a solution for is that I need an easel that I can sit at with my leg up on a stool because it is not yet fully healed. I have easels. I have a great one set up facing a north light but it is set up on a high table and I use it while sitting on an adjustable height stool. There is no way I can rest my leg on a stool! I have a regular studio easel which I have to stand at. The construction makes it impossible to put my leg on a stool with that one. So I spent hours online shopping for easels. I saw one I liked but it takes up a lot of floor space and my house is small. 

Then I remembered I had seen a thing to attach to the back of a drawing board to set it up on a camera tripod. Plenty of space under a tripod for a footstool. I bought that and a lightweight drawing board and I am going to use it to start my next portrait tomorrow. I will be working A3 size which is uncomfortably big for the table easel. I will be working in Acryl gouache which is a gentle medium so the camera tripod should stand up to it nicely. 

New Portrait of Bryn in Graphite Pencil

It feels like a long time since I did any serious artwork. I have a rash on my left leg that means that I have to sit with my leg on a stool. I found it very difficult to draw with my leg sticking out to the left. It was putting me off balance until I developed some new muscles to compensate!

I also needed to buy a new easel that I could use on the kitchen table. I bought myself an easel that I can tilt and rotate, so that instead of me bending to shade at an angle, I can twist the drawing board round. 

I started drawing this portrait of my old dog, Bryn, last year. She is very grey now so I am using an old photo as reference, but the pose is still so typical of her. She is a very elegant lady. 

I am drawing on Bristol board using mechanical pencils in sizes .3 and .5 in 2B. I love using the pencils which have a special grip area, but, even more, I love using the leads which have nano diamonds so they are blacker than usual because nano diamonds lubricate the lead. 

The piece of card at the bottom of the photo is so I can rest my hand on the surface without getting grease on the drawing. Graphite doesn't stick well to grease. 

Now Bryn's face is drawn, I was thinking that it wouldn't have be long before I finished it, but I forgot about the lovely twirly rosettes of fur on her chest. They will take some time. I am so glad that I bought the new easel!