It's finished!! Here is the completed drawing of "Flint", hope you like it Donna! You should be able to click the above photo for an enlarged view. Aha! As I type, Sarah (who commissioned me to draw this for her friend, Donna) has sent me some photos of the picture in the frame she bought. Here it is (I'm promised a pic of it mounted on the wall soon, and will share when that arrives).

Sarah sent me a text over the weekend that read as follows:- "I gave Donna the picture last night as I couldn't wait. She instantly cried as she was so happy with it and knew it was Flint the minute she saw it. She said it looks just like him.". Sarah also told me that Donna's parents were moved when they saw the drawing and spent quite a while comparing it to photos of Flint and commenting on how accurate it is.

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I have another commission coming up; a much more challenging drawing! Details on that to follow.

Pastels, pets, portraits

• I've been delighted recently, to receive a few commissions for pet portraits; two of which came directly from this blog! It's given my confidence a huge boost :o)
• This Portrait, however, came from family. Adam's little brother's girlfriend (keeping up?), Sarah, asked me a few weeks ago if I would consider drawing a portrait of her friend's dog, called Flint. Sadly Flint passed away (at a ripe old age) and Sarah felt that a portrait of him would be a nice gift for his owner. Sarah presented me with a small, dogeared photograph that she had "borrowed" from her friend's house; I had to scan it and get it back to her asap so she could smuggle it back in, hehe!
• Now, firstly I'll point out that I don't know Sarah's friend and she doesn't know me (other than a passing face at the family BBQs), so I feel happy that I can blog about this without her finding out.
• Secondly, I have to comment on how lovely this dog is - as soon as I saw the picture of him I was in love. He's a German Shepherd dog (I believe) but is a gorgeous golden colour. The colours in his coat, and the lovely way his fur flows meant this was a fantastic portrait to take on, especially as I'm still finding my way in this field.
• And thirdly, I have to express my complete surprise at how this small 5"x3" photo, taken a number of years ago (when Flint was in his prime) and in a rather sorry state, enlarged - I was amazed with how much detail was in that tiny photograph! I scanned it in at 1200dpi and have enlarged it to A3 (16"x11" I think) with virtually no quality loss! I've no idea what kind of megapixel digital camera would be required to reproduce such detail!

And this is the same scan at after I was done fixing it up. I'm easily distracted and was finding the scuffs getting in the way of my "seeing" the dog, so I patched it up - which has quite conveniently made for another gift for Sarah's friend should she like to have a larger copy of her photo. Again, this image was reduced in size to blog, but I think you can get the idea.

As I've managed to get this far without actually sharing in-progress photos, here are two; this one was from last week. I have "discovered" pastels with this portrait - after the recent drawing I did of the Border Collie using normal pencil crayons on a dark packground, I was quite wary of "losing" the portrait. I don't know how to explain this, but if you compare pencil crayon drawings with pastel ones, especially on darker paper, the pastel ones seem to "glow" somehow. This in mind, I chose to try pastels for this portrait and at least block in the colour using them.

I was really pleased with the results using the pastels, and after having a few hours over the weekend and today's lunchbreak at work (have I mentioned how lovely my boss is...?) to spend working on the drawing; here's the results at this point.

I think I will be returning to the normal pencil crayons soon with this one; I just can't get the fine detail that I'm so obsessed with (hey, I'm a Virgo, what can I do??) using pastels alone. So, in true experimental fashion I'll be giving the pencil crayons a go, in the hope that this lovely "glow" I've managed to stumble on using the pastels will remain, whilst still allowing me to add in the fine details that I love. I'm mildly concerned that I may overwork this portrait, but I won't know unless I try, and the pad i'm using has 24 sheets in it, so if I truly stuff it up, I can happily re-do it. I have until Christmas, that's ages, right?...

I just have to add in this photo, of Deeley (the "other" cat) helping me! I think perhaps she'd prefer it if I kept to drawing cats!! Or maybe she's just reminding me that I've not done HER portrait yet, hehe!

Edible delights all everywhere I looked!

• Sometimes, you just CANNOT be good. However well-intentioned you are (which to be honest, I'm not very!) sometimes you just find yourself surrounded by edible delights that are just so indulgent, you just have to throw conscience to the wind and enjoy them!
• Last weekend was one of those times. On Friday I went to visit my friend Emily Prouse. She's one of the "ones-to-watch" in this hobby, her finishwork is incredible and her re-scuplting is showing great promise. She's still at school so when I go to visit her, I also get to meet up with her parents, who are two of the most creative and inspirational people I know - I can easily see how Emily has become such a talent!
• Anyway, on Friday I made a quick visit to say hi and to pick up a gorgeous painted copy of Pickle V2 that Emily kindly offered to paint as a 30th Birthday gift to me! We had talked about colours and as I already have a gray copy and a deep bay pinto copy, and as Mulberry gray is practically unheard of in Arab horses; Emily painted this copy to a beautifully rich, colourful Rose Gray. In this photo the eyes aren't glossed but I can vouch for their quality (Emily does FANTASTIC eyes!) and there is also a multitude of little hair-details that you can't even see in the photo.
• THANK YOU Emily, this is a super-special model that I will cherish! :o)

• Whilst visiting Emily, it was a lovely surprise to find that her Mom had baked a cake for my visit - how lovely is that?! This cake, my, oh my, this cake... well, the photo below should show just how gorgeously indulgently FABULOUS this cake was - we each had a more-than-generous slice topped with vanilla ice-cream, mmmmm!!! Just look at that steam, fresh from the oven gooey richness.
• You know you have a great friend when they know just what level of indulgence to offer (in my case - EXTREME!)!!

Now, on to something not edible, but generally food-based. Now I know I'm late here, but that's the story of my life (living a few paces behind the rest of the world!). I've never carved a pumpkin before - now I know I was a week late with this one, but we'd bought it ready for Guy-Fawkes but not had a chance to carve it; we had a big fireworks bach over the weekend at Adam's parents' house so I took the opportunity and carved this guy - he's munching a cucumber end. I was quite pleased for a first attempt! I also found it very therapeutic, but perhaps that's my Savage side coming out...!

The final icing on the cake, so to speak, came not from me, but from Adam - he's a bit handy in the kitchen when we're not restricted to dinner "a-la-ding", and he fancied making some home-made marshmallows for the family event. Ok, they may not look as neat and tidy as the supermarket types, but that just added to the home-made speciality of them and they tasted great!! This plate-full was kept back and we brought it home, and during this week (we're only on Wednesday!!) the marshmallows have steadily disappeared - now I know I didn't eat ALL of them... ;o)

Back to more artistic endeavours next time, I just felt I had to share in these delights!

RESS Windward

• Urgh, just when I think it's safe to ditch the bullets, the paragraphs get all mushed together again! Apologies for that - I'll play safe with the bullets again this time (that was an odd sentence to write!)
• Now, the reason that some of my sculptures are on hold, well, one of them anyway, is thanks to a wonderful thing that has happened. Jasper, the trad scale Percheron model I've been working on (forever!) has been accepted into the RESS Windward program!!
• The RESS Windward program was set up to help people just like me - sculptors who want to produce an accurate, well balanced and realistic equine sculpture to a high standard, but who have stalled and need a little expert help to get to that final stage.
• Windward is a relatively new program for RESS, just one person has been involved before me. Michelle Platt entered her sculputre of a mule called Festus. The review and critique was offered by Lyn Fraley; a very highly regarded sculptor who's works are incredible; and were submitted into the RESS bi-annual newsletter called The Boat. I was just so incredibly impressed with the critique that I went for it, and was accepted for the 2009 Winter edition, which is to be released in January '09.
• So, as I've not submitted my images for review Jasper is on hold, but when I receive my critique I'll be steaming ahead with him, and with a bit of luck might even get him finished!
• It's been a long journey with Jasper, so far I've been working on him for over 4 years! It would be such a buzz to finslly get him completed and cast, even if just for a few copies for myself.
• More to come!

New Beginning

I'm going to be blogging a few times over the next few days, I'm so far behind with reporting all the things I've been up to, and a couple of non-arty things just HAVE to be reported! . First up, this is "Little One", although after putting the title "New Beginning" on this posting I'm fancying that for a name too - what do you think? . This is a regular traditional scale (ie not large trad, not small trad either but will suit most mares Lg Classic to Trad size) foal, in my mind she is a couple of days old - still sleepy and vulnerable, but dry, fluffy, well-fed and comfortable. She's of no specific breed. I got to this point (image below) using a softer grade of clay, I knew I wouldn't be able to complete the model in that clay, but it made it so much easier to push it around and try out all the poses possible, before I set my heart on this one. I wanted to show her all tangled up with her back legs crossed, but my first design had her legs crossed above the knee, and after failing to find any good reference images I did find a couple of foals with their ankles crossed like this. She's curled up tightly and I really like how this pose shows off all that I was aiming for in the above paragraph. . I knew when I made this model that I'd have to re-make it in a harder grade of clay in order to complete it. The soft stuff just doesn't hold the detail well enough for me, and is easily damaged or accidentally "squished". The photo bloew shows the original model (from above) on the left and the new, harder grade one on the right. The head was originally made separately out of hard-grade clay, so will just transfer across. This does make for quite a disturbing sight though!

The new copy has a way to go before it portrays my original design satisfactorily. Until then I'll have both in front of me each time I sculpt. The hard clay makes for much slower progress, so will take a while before I can make it accurate to the original. Then I'll need to make it accurate to a real foal! After that the fun will begin with details, but I must must MUST resist that urge until all the bits are in the right place.

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I'm really enjoying this new project, I have several in-progress models on the go or on hold, but I really felt the need to begin something fresh and new, it's been a long time since I completed a fresh sculpture!

N.B.

Note - Amber may appear a little "odd" looking - this is because she has no whiskers yet! I have yet to buy a good white pen that I can use in this situation, and didn't want to ruin my work so far by trying to produce whiskers using paint.

Another little sketch

Is it November already?!?! How'd that happen? I finished this little sketch last night, it measures about 4.5" wide (the drawn part, as it was done on a corner of an A3 sheet). I used my Faber Castell PITT pens for this; the same pens I used on the horse sketch in my last post. This is a drawing of Amber, one of our two Bengal cats.

I also have a new commission! I've been asked to draw a portrait of a gorgeous golden coloured German Shepherd dog, as a gift to his owner who lots him earlier this year. I'm going to be using pastel pencils for this one, and it is being drawn on a larger paper than I've used previously (I like small!) 16"x12". I've only done the eyes and part of the nose so far, but I can already see the difference with using pastels over normal coloured pencils, the colours are far more vibrant! More on that portrait later, as I've not taken any pics to share yet.