He has been stripping my studio walls of pictures and sorting out labels etc. My 'daydreaming tiger' which won Reserve Best in Show at the UKCPS International exhibition in Stamford last month arrived back here today, and the tiger I recently completed in pastels was collected from the framer today. As usual Tony (from 'Picture This' at Birchington, Kent) has done a wonderful job but I was surprised how large the finished picture is ... and how heavy it is!! I seem to have mostly cat pictures but probably won't have time to add any more dogs or horses to the collection. Lets hope there are lots of cat lovers in Whitstable around mid-November (domestic and wild cats).
So my plans to work on the coloured pencil portraits were postponed until tomorrow afternoon but I did manage to (almost) complete the snow leopard - despite all the interruptions!
A few more WIP pictures: I'm never quite sure whether its best to show the pics in reverse order (ie latest pic first, or t'other way round)
This photo was taken last night and turned out very dark ... but although not accurate, I preferred the darker background and so I changed it this morning
As you can see these are all photographed at different times of day, in different light conditions but I think the colours shown here are pretty accurate
This next photo looks a little too 'blue' but I wanted to photograph the picture before I sprayed it with fixative. I'm not a fan of commercial fixatives as they really 'kill' the vibrancy of the pastels at times, but I'm using soft pastels rather than pastel pencils on this leopard and I'm not comfortable about framing it without 'fixing' it first.
Finally this evening I photographed the leopard with the mount and frame I'll be using. This is a single mount and I normally use double mounts with pastel works so I will be putting spacers between the picture and the mount to provide an 'escape route' for any stray pastel dust in the future. The frame is a very simple brass one which I had at home
I may re-photograph this tomorrow in better light - but you get the idea I hope:
This is the framed Tiger picture. I really struggle to photograph pictures once they are behind glass as I always end up with me or something else quite inappropriate being reflected in the glass. This is the best I could do today, and it has muted the colours a bit
