16/04: TWO CATS FINISHED (I THINK)

I did a bit of tidying up on 'Wednesday's  Cat' and will probably call this finished now

and this afternoon I continued working on the picture of Page - unfortunately, the final photographs were taken as the light was fading and they turned out a little blue.  I have adjusted the colour slightly to more closely match the original but hopefully I'll get the chance to photograph it in better light during the weekend.

Having almost finished the cat, I wasn't sure what to do about the bottom left hand corner.  In the reference photo there is a blurry, soft focus, effect.  I think its probably the edge of a cat bed?   Anyway, despite hubby's advice to draw a brick wall (??!!) I took the simpler option and merely copied what I saw and that's the way it will stay :o)

I doubt I'll get the chance to do any more drawings for the next day or so as we had 40 bags of compost delivered today and that needs to be spread on the flower beds tomorrow, we also have a very untidy and extremely muddy  'hidden' corner of the garden which needs to be cleared as the garden landscapers will be working there next week laying a gravel/paving slab base so we can more easily use the area in the Winter months.   So a couple of days of hard labour coming up!!

Have a good weekend

15/04: 'PAGE' ANOTHER CAT - WIP

I have photographs showing Page in two different poses and will draw them both and decide which one(s) can be included with the submission to SOFA.   I can only submit 4 pictures so decision time will be next week I guess.

This is A3 size, pastels on Fisher 400 paper.   It isn't going as smoothly as the previous two and I'm not sure why.   Because the Fisher 400 only comes in one colour (light sand) I decided to do a very simple white wash background.  But I don't have any white watercolour paint. I tried using shavings from a watercolour pencil but that wasn't successful.  I then watered down some gouache .... not brilliant but it did the trick.

The colours may alter from photo to photo as they were taken at different times of day, in different daylight conditions.

I always start with the eyes - if these don't work I know I'll never be happy with the picture.   Well, that could be the case here also .... I think I'm 'nearly there' and decided to crack on and just mark out the areas of darker fur

The ears are finished and I carried on just blocking in areas of colour working out where his marking are:

To borrow a phrase from a fellow artist - I'm 'flitting' around this one, adding detail in some places, then smudging it all in and losing definition.  So I decided to be sensible and call it a day.   Hopefully things will improve tomorrow

14/04: ANOTHER CAT 99% FINISHED

I had a real tussle with the new printer this morning.  It threw a major tantrum because I loaded 'Epson compatible' inks rather than the real McCoy.  My old printer used to object slightly if I loaded non-Epson inks but after a polite 'do you realise I may not be able to give you high quality results if you proceed with this cheap stuff' it got on with the job ...

Not this printer ..... it stamped its feet and refused to print.   After 10 minutes it told me it was out of Cyan ink.  So I added a new cartridge.   When it did the same thing for the other three colours, which I knew  were full , we had a heated discussion for another half-hour before it eventually shrugged its shoulders and printed my picture!

This all came about because I decided to draft out another cat picture last night - not a good idea after a large glass of red wine.    When I looked at the outline this morning I realised it was way out .... so I wanted to print out the ref picture and grid it so I could more easily spot/rectify the problem area in my sketch. 

Anyway, apart from the computer hassle I've had an interruption-free drawing day.  The gardeners won't be back till next week and David (hubby) was out for the day.     I made good progress with this cat and, like the ragdoll, I will leave it for a few days and look at it with fresh eyes/do final adjustments next week.  I'm not happy with the fur on the 'white ruff' although it looks like that in the ref .... I'll need to have a think about that bit.

This is drawn in pastels on Fisher 400 (still my favourite support for pastels)

13/04: RAGDOLL CAT - 99% FINISHED

Another day where I didn't get as much time for artwork as I'd hoped ... but the guys are working wonders in our garden and I'm looking forward to getting out there at the weekend and tidying up the beds and pots and sowing seeds etc.   These lovely guys turn up on time, are polite and friendly and ultra tidy .... so I found myself dashing off to the supermarket to buy biscuits and cakes to offer with their hourly cups of tea ... things I don't do for my own hubby :o)    What a sign of the times eh!!

Anyway, the ragdoll cat is just about finished.   It needs some tidying but I'll come back to it in a day or two and look at it with fresh eyes.

I have another three cats on my shortlist - then it will be on to some wildlife art for a very welcome change

Given the angle of the pose and to accommodate his whiskers, I will slightly offset the portrait in the mount/frame and it will look something like this:

12/04: RAGDOLL CAT - WIP

Things have been a bit chaotic here today.   We have a team of landscape gardeners renewing fences, digging foundations for retaining flower bed walls etc.  They started work last November but because of the horrible Winter weather haven't been able to complete the work till now - our soil is heavy clay and it has just been too boggy for the guys to work out there.

Anyway, I did make some progress with the cat but not as much as I'd hoped.  I'm enjoying this one and hope that will be reflected in the end result:

11/04: CATCH UP TIME

My lovely hubby bought me a new computer on Bank Holiday Monday and its taken the best part of five days to configure everything.   Why must upgrading be so difficult?   The latest programmes no longer support the old anti-virus or email packages and the printer won't talk to the new machine ..... what a nightmare!!

Anyway, I think everything is sorted at last and this machine is certainly much faster.  I'd had the old one for five years so I guess it was almost an antique in 'computer years'

Since returning from holiday I've been experimenting with different combinations of pencils/pastels and supports.  I have quite a collection of papers that I've tried and abandoned over the months/years and thought it was time to revisit them to see whether I like them any better now.

I've concentrated on drawing cats as I think I may still be in time to submit a picture or two to the SOFA Summer Exhibition if I can come up with something I'm happy with.  So its been almost 'a cat a day' for the last week!   I joined SOFA (Society of Feline Artists) last year but was too busy with commissions to draw any cats 'for me' and I hope to remedy that situation.   This year I will be accepting far fewer commissions (until the run up to Christmas) as we need to do a lot of work in the house and Garden this Summer.

This is an experiment using Prismacolour coloured pencils on Colourfix paper.   I really struggled with this and didn't like the combination at all - in fact I gave up before finishing the drawing and have just cropped the bottom of the picture out.  

This is drawn in pastel on Clairefontaine Pastelmat and I was much happier with the coverage - the only problem I have with Pastelmat is the limited colour range - this is 'Natural Sienna' which is a great colour in daylight but looks almost orange and a little 'garish' in artificial light.

I love this little chap ..... drawn in pastel on green Canson Mi-Teintes paper.   Canson do a fabulous range of colours but, having got used to the heavy duty sanded papers, I find this paper quite 'flimsy' at just 160gm2 and coverage is not as good (IMHO).  I will be 'test driving' some Murano paper later in the week and suspect I'll have similar views on that range.  But, I'm committed to re-trying the various brands I have gathering dust here ....... I'll probably be leaving the velour till last as I bought quite a lot a couple of years back when it was very 'fashionable' before I fell out of love with it. 

I know I've shown this next one before but I entered him into the UKCPS Spring Exhibition at Keswick.  Closing date for entries was yesterday but, because space at the Gallery is limited and the exhibition will probably be oversubscribed, it will be 'names out of the hat' to select pictures to be hung.  We won't know the results of the ballot for a while yet.   If I'm not one of the successful entrants in the UKCPS exhibition I will probably see whether it can be submitted for the SOFA exhibition.   Actually, this photo was taken before he was properly finished but as he is mounted and framed now it's not so easy to get a decent photo because of the glare from the glass.  He was drawn in coloured pencil on Fabriano Artistico HP paper and the title is 'Curiosity did what?'

and, finally in the cat series, this is one I started today and all I've done here is sketched the outline and fur direction very roughly in white pastel pencil.   As usual I've started with the eyes and I'm looking forward to progressing with this one tomorrow.   It will be drawn in soft pastel/pastel pencil on Sennelier La Carte on the 'dark blue grey' colour.   At 360g this is is real heavyweight paper so its no wonder I'm finding the Canson rather flimsy by comparison!  I will be posting some WIP pics for this one I think.

I have a couple of coloured pencil pictures on the go as well - really trying to get out of my 'comfort zone' and add scenery/backgrounds.   I'll post those on another occasion though.   

04/04: CORRALEJO CARNIVAL

Any excuse for a party!!  The Spanish love their Fiestas and Carnivals and the major one on Fuerteventura takes place in March.  It lasts for 12 days with the quieter events taking place throughout the weekdays/nights and the major events at the weekends.  On the final Saturday it ends with a procession through the town of Corralejo and as well as the official floats and dance/drum troupes adhering to the theme (this year it was 'JUNGLE') all the locals and visitors tend to join in too - wearing whatever fancy dress they happen to 'find' in the wardrobe it seems!

Old or Young - its a fun time to be in Corralejo - but expect the unexpected at all times.   It seems to be the norm for men to dress as women - we got coated in talcum powder by a Group of  cross-dressed nurses when walking home from a Quiz in the early hours one morning :o)

After the procession, which takes about 3 hours to travel through town, the open-air party starts at midnight and goes on till about 6am.  Must admit we've never participated in that event

The following evening there is the traditional 'Burial of the Sardine' which entails a huge effigy of a sardine being paraded through town behind a group of grieving/wailing 'widows' dressed in black.    The procession ends up at the Town Beach where (eventually) the Sardine is set alight and when it finishes burning the fireworks start - and they are spectacular.   I believe the meaning behind this tradition is similar to that of our Harvest Festivals.

As if that wasn't enough excitement ...... the annual Blues Festival started a few days later.   Blues singers/groups from around the world appeared throughout the day/night at various venues in Town - both in the open air and in Hotels/Bars etc.

If you ever get the chance to visit Fuerteventura in March you're sure to have fun!   Anyway, here are a few photos of the main procession (the ones in daylight were taken at the assembly point which was close to our house).  Despite having a year to organise everything the procession inevitably starts late ... but as long as there are lots of scantily dressed dancers and lots of guys banging drums and blowing whistles, nobody seems to care much

09/03: PLAYTIME!!

David and I are about to fly off to our home in sunny Fuerteventura (Canaries) for some R&R!!     We have to get up at around 4.30am tomorrow morning but its worth it as we'll be in sunshine by lunchtime tomorrow!!

It has been a busy, but wonderful day today.   We met my stepdaughter (Caroline)  and her boyfriend, and David's Mum at a Kentish Pub for a lovely lunch to celebrate Caroline's **st birthday!!   We then went on to have coffee with our best friends who will  be house-sitting whilst we are away and whose beautiful and talented grand-daughter drew a portrait of the two of us .... I will be mounting and framing this when I get back after our break .. but what chance do we aspiring artists have when faced with talent like this ( the artist is 6 years old)!!

05/03: SNOWY FINISHED

Just a quick posting as this is one of the rare occasions that David is cooking Dinner - and I need to be ready when he presents the 'masterpiece' :o)

Snowy has been finished and approved so will be en route to Wales shortly where he will be professionally framed ready for presentation to my client's brother at his birthday party.

05/03: WARNING TO MY BLOGGER FRIENDS

Overnight my blog was infected with some malicious code that forwarded visitors away from my site. Scarily, it seemed to be multiplying rapidly so we needed to isolate/remove it urgently. No idea how it got through my firewall ....

David and I spent hours trawling through html and eventually found the code that had been added - repeated in two places - but it couldn't be edited out through the control panel, even using the html editor. The code had attached itself inside two widgets. Removing the widgets took the code away. In my case the 'clock' and the 'calendar' widgets were the carriers.

It looks like it wasn't an attack on my website; it was an attack on the widgets and everyone who uses them. I've had no response from the Help Teams/Forum at Google - despite sending them several emails. I can see from the forums that this has happened to a lot of Bloggers recently.

If anybody is on the receiving end of this nasty code - email me and hopefully I can save you hours of searching. I won't show the (very long) offending code here in case it 'bursts into life'. I'd hate to be responsible for perpetuating it

04/03: SNOWY - A LITTLE MORE PROGRESS

When my pencils didn't turn up this morning I did panic a little and decided to drive to my nearest art shop which is approx 10 miles away in Canterbury.   Although its a huge shop, they never seem to stock whatever it is I'm looking for - and today was no exception.  No pencil extenders and the only white pastel pencils sold individually were Derwents (old range).   I do use Derwents, but prefer the Conte white.   I bought a couple to 'tide me over' and, of course, when I got back home my SAA order had been delivered by courier!!!

So, not too much progress to show on Snowy - I have done more work since I photographed this stage but won't take more photos tonight as the colours will really look strange in artificial light:

Here I've added more colour to Snowy's nose and worked on his tongue and mouth.  I've extended the fur line and this is broadly where the fur will 'fade out' so it sits nicely in the mount.    Tomorrow will really be the day to reinforce the shadows and contours, re-define eyes and areas where the pastel dust has dulled colours a  little and draw in whiskers and 'finishing bits' then its over to my client to let me know what changes, if any, are required before I 'fix' the pastel.

03/03: SNOWY (WHITE GERMAN SHEPHERD DOG) WIP

Snowy has just 'eaten' all my white pastel pencils!!

Actually, that isn't quite true but, if you read my earlier post, you will know that today I discovered the last batch of white pastel pencils I bought are faulty and they can't be sharpened without crumbling. I have more on order and they'll be with me tomorrow. In the meantime I used all the whites I had - the sanded papers I favour really do use the pastels up at a great rate. I've never used pencil extenders (sounds slightly obscene I think)?? but maybe I need to re-think. Look at these poor little stubs!!

Here are some pictures I took throughout the day - as usual, apologies for the quality and the changes in colour as the photographs were taken in different light conditions. I'll work more on the colour adjustments when the portrait is closer to completion.

I've started to lay down some of the colours I can see under the white fur and which will help to define Snowy's facial structure

Once the white hair gets overlaid you can barely see the base colours but without them the white would just look flat and unrealistic

This is as far as I got today - I added some base colour to Snowy's nose and continued with the white fur. Tomorrow I'll concentrate on the mouth and tongue - hopefully the new white pencils I've ordered will arrive in time for me to do more work on the fur.

03/03: I NEED A PENCIL SHARPENER!

What I mean is, I need somebody on hand to keep my pencils sharp - I hate having to keep stopping work to sharpen them. Its even worse as I appear to have bought a 'duff' batch of white Faber Castell Pitt pastels. I can't remember where these came from but it seems they've been dropped or badly handled at some stage, as fast as I sharpen them they crumble and break .... I have enough white to see me through today but the sanded paper I'm working on does eat pastel pencils at a great rate. Thank goodness for the SAA (society for all artists) - I've just placed an urgent order online and it should be here tomorrow - phew!

I'm just having a coffee break and giving my eyes a rest but I've done more work on Snowy the white GSD and will post pics later.

Jo has confirmed its OK to show the graphite drawing - this photo isn't wonderful as my camera really dislikes black + white pictures. As I wasn't sure if I was actually going to send this to them, I didn't take many pictures - here it is pinned on my workboard - you can still make out shadows where the paper was rolled in a tube when I took it on holiday to work on - it is Mellotex white paper which is almost cardlike so I'm surprised it has taken so long to recover from its journey. Anyway, Happy Anniversary Jo & Roy - I know its a few weeks' away yet but you and your friends/family made us feel so welcome - can't believe its almost a year ago!

02/03: 'WIN SOME, LOSE SOME'

Its been a 'funny old week' really. I expected to be working on a portrait of a lovely Ragdoll cat. I'd received half a dozen reference photos and had lots of email conversations regarding size, payment, delivery etc., and then ... total silence! I have to assume the client has changed his mind, for whatever reason, but I'm reluctant to delete the pictures and/or instructions 'just in case' .... such a shame as it is a beautiful cat!

If you've been following my recent ramblings you will have noted a few references to a graphite double portrait I'd been working on recently. I started work on it whilst on holiday in Fuerteventura but the paper didn't take kindly to being rolled in a cardboard packing tube, or to the humidity, so I gaveup and brought it back home to the UK to work on. The portrait was of my fellow artist JO SIMPSON and her hubby ROY. Jo and I 'met' on an artist forum and became cyber friends over the years. We met 'in the flesh' for the first time last year when she invited me to Derbyshire to her wedding - having decided to make an honest man of Roy after UMPTEEN years!! As the first anniversary is PAPER I thought it would be fun to do a graphite drawing based on some of the photos I took then.

The portrait didn't turn out as well as I would have liked, but David (hubby) persuaded me to send it to them anyway and I'm really pleased that it arrived with them today and Jo and Roy tell me they are happy with it (in fact I'm 'chuffed as a maggot' - whatever that quaint expression means)! I haven't posted a photo of the portrait as I forgot to ask Jo if she'd mind .... we'll see

Before flying back to Fuerteventura next week, I'm delighted to be working on a portrait of a gorgeous white German Shepherd dog. The portrait is to be a surprise 40th birthday present for my client's brother and I have her permission to post some WIP pictures on the blog as he is unlikely to see them.

I was sent several reference photos and the portrait is based on a couple which are very similar but allow me to flit between the two to pick up as much detail as possible. I'm working in pastel on Sennelier Pastel Card on the colour they describe as Light Blue Grey. At a very early stage - this is Snowy:

I outlined Snowy today to work out fur direction and position of ears, eyes, nose etc.,

and then, as usual, I worked on Snowy's eyes to an 'almost completed' stage so his portrait gets a little personality as I build on this early start - and on to his ears.