28/02: FINISHING TOUCHES

I had very nice feedback regarding Lottie's WIP photo so have now added the final whiskers and photographed the picture in a selection of mounts awaiting the final verdict:

With the stern words of Peter Barker (wonderful artist and fellow Blogger) ringing in my ears, I am trying to avoid truncating my animal subjects when portraying them. ... Peter has a strong dislike of heads being chopped off at the neck ... and doesn't hesitate to say so - he has given me some great advice over the last few weeks :-)

So with Lottie .... although I was working to my 'mid size' portrait I extended her chest further down the paper than normal.  This gives my client the choice of having the mid size mount where there is little background showing behind Lottie, or having a larger mount with more background/chest showing.    They have a lovely spacious farmhouse with lots of wallspace so I'm pleased to give them the option of making a 'larger' framed picture of the portrait.

this is how it looks with the smaller mount 18" x 14"

and in a larger mount - this is ivory with plum inner (but I also showed the portrait in a white mount with black inner) - to fit frame size 20" x 16"

Whilst awaiting a decision on Lottie I finished the coloured pencil portrait of Sophie-Louise.  Not really sure about this one; the pose that I liked in the photograph looks slightly strange in the cropped version but I finished it anyway.   It was a very quick coloured pencil work and if I don't have time to complete anything before the 10th March deadline for the UKCPS Keswick exhibition I may just submit this ... entries are drawn by ballot rather than selected by Jury so its always worth a try :-)

Originally I'd planned to use a square mount/frame but had a change of plan today and selected this frame which is a dusky pink/grey shade.   The mount/frame are just loosely laid over the drawing, hence the shadows.