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!