Black birds

 Those of you who keep patiently reading my posts will know just how many crow pictures I've been getting through lately. I'm still enjoying them, it's nice when time is tight to have something I can do start to finish in a relatively short time. 

 However, I also wanted to get some new pieces up in the shop to keep them company. Since we moved to Whitby, I've become fascinated with the cormorants that sit out in the harbour. I wanted to see if I could produce similar images with them, on a slightly larger scale.

These stand at just 6" x 4", done in the same charcoal pencil on Fabriano Artistico paper. There's enough detail to give them life while keeping that stark black outline. I've put the first pair up in my Etsy shop thanks to some rather pleasing photos taken on my new camera - more of that in the next post :)

Flying out of the door

 I recently showed my work at the Dark Arts exhibition here in Whitby. I sold a couple of crows as expected - they're a nice size for presents - and thought I should print off some more photos to work from so I could restock my Etsy shop. 

jackdaw charcoal drawing

 At which point, someone found my shop and bought a couple for their new home. Another customer came along and swiped a pair for themselves. I dug out all the paper I had and got stuck in.

crow drawing in progress

The first Etsy buyer then came back to say they'd spotted a couple in my sold listings and could I redo them ? No problem I said and added those two to the pile. I caught up and listed another two new ones...which promptly sold. Followed by another two :)

 

 

 

crow pencil drawing

By the end of the second week, I had one crow left in stock and ran out of paper ! So, guess what I'm doing this week - crows anyone ?

Snails for all :)

 This week has been a very exciting one for me - I received my very first professional prints of three of my original drawings. I've been looking for months at various printers, choosing papers and getting test prints done before finally settling on the combination that I felt would give the best result across the board.

 I went for Hahnemuhle paper as it has a beautiful smooth white surface similar to the paper I draw on. It also holds black incredibly well so the prints are crisp and dramatic without losing any of the detail in the original.

 I had the snail and the hermit crab done as a set since they are the most popular images in my shop, along with Stephen. I'm currently working on a matched pair of landcape images which I think will be next up. 

It's taken a lot of pressure off work wise because my shop no longer empties out alarmingly every time someone buys a few things and with greeting cards coming soon I can offer something for every pocket :)

Snails for all :)

 This week has been a very exciting one for me - I received my very first professional prints of three of my original drawings. I've been looking for months at various printers, choosing papers and getting test prints done before finally settling on the combination that I felt would give the best result across the board.

 I went for Hahnemuhle paper as it has a beautiful smooth white surface similar to the paper I draw on. It also holds black incredibly well so the prints are crisp and dramatic without losing any of the detail in the original.

 I had the snail and the hermit crab done as a set since they are the most popular images in my shop, along with Stephen. I'm currently working on a matched pair of landcape images which I think will be next up. 

It's taken a lot of pressure off work wise because my shop no longer empties out alarmingly every time someone buys a few things and with greeting cards coming soon I can offer something for every pocket :)

Waspish

 After all the excitement of putting some of my bigger pieces on sale, it was back to the drawing board for my latest wildlife picture. This time it was a wasp that had caught my eye- but no ordinary wasp :)

 She's a netelia producta, or an orange caterpillar parasite wasp to you and me, that we found in our garden in Cornwall. One of those creatures that is so beautiful you feel positively inadequate just looking at her....

 She was also very cooperative and posed for several photos before flying off. I'd sold a  set of three insect studies which left me with, er, none so she got bumped up the queue for my next effort. 

Once again she's done in charcoal pencil on Langton hot press watercolour paper which has a lovely smooth surface. I worked an hour a day and took photos as I went along to share with you. 

Because she has such a dark body and white legs,  had to fill in the background to a greater extent on this one to provide contrast. Normally, I add just enough to give the image context but madame had to be difficult at some point, didn't she :)

Here she is after the final tweaking - and she's now available to buy here :)

Hermitage

 I'm very pleased today to reveal the finished drawing of the little hermit crab I started a couple of weeks ago. I had to stop so far through to complete the pet portrait I'd been commissioned to do so must admit the last leg (no pun intended) was a bit harder to do.

 I'd taken a photo of this rockpool dweller when I was living in Cornwall and decided he would make a fantastic charcoal study. He has beautiful markings and the texture on his claws when you get up close is incredible.

 I did this one on Langton hot press watercolour paper with my favourite charcoal pencils. He took nine and a half hours to complete and the finished piece is around 19cm wide (drawn area).

I'm thinking of switching soon to Fabriano Artistico paper which I've used before as it's amazingly crisp and white so for such tiny detail, maybe better than the Langton. Will let you know :)

Crabby

 Since posting my progress on the snail drawing caused so much general amusement, I've decided to keep it up with my latest project.

 I took this photo when I was living in Cornwall and had been meaning to do something with it ever since. Because I've moved house and generally had a lot going on, it's been difficult to knuckle down to anything on a grand scale so I decided to approach the problem from the other end of the scale :)

By picking something that has an awful lot of tiny detail and just doing an hour a day which is frankly about as much of that sort of thing as the eyeballs will take, I'm getting something of a routine going and it's paying off. My shop is filling up again with new work and I've found inspiration again by doing something new. You can follow my adventures in charcoal on my facebook page.

Unveiling the snail....

In case you've not been following my progress on Facebook, the snail is now done and up for sale in my Etsy shop :)

 This is my drawing space- under the Dormer window in my flat. Great light coming from three sides- what more could an artist ask for?

 

 I was working in charcoal pencil again which obviously smudges very easily so I use a wooden bridge attached to my board so my hand doesn't touch the paper.

 For the same reason, being right handed, I start in the top left hand corner and work away from the area I've already completed.

It took me nine hours from start to finish- I'm quite pleased with the result, my first snail and a challenge both because of the skin texture and the fact that as a macro close-up, some areas were out of focus. I added just enough of the foreground to set off the very pale area under his mouth and put the finished piece away before I started faffing with it :)

Snails pace

Just a quick post to let you know that you can now watch my progress daily ! This should be a huge help to those of you trying to avoid getting on with your own work :) When I am drawing, I will be posting daily updates and photos of the latest work in progress on my facebook page. 

My current project is a snail I found on our garden path in Pendeen- beautifully backlit by the morning sun. I'd always thought snails were interesting but had never looked on them as especially beautiful. I took some photos and when I ran through them, was amazed at what I saw. I'm doing an hour a day on this as I have another project under construction too which I shall reveal later :)

Carbonised

 Following on from my last post, here's the first of my carbon and charcoal experiments.

 

I've worked with both kinds of pencil before but never as two distinct elements in the same image - which is why I started with the small version :)

I used carbon pencil for the cat in the foreground to give me a soft black and the fuzzy edges. One of the things I liked about the photograph I was working from was the fact it was the crows in the background that were in sharp focus.

I used sharp charcoal for the wonderfully distinctive crows so that even on such a tiny scale- the whole thing is only 3 x 4 inches- I could get a really crisp outline and feather texture. This one is already on sale here -next up, I'm trying a larger version using the same materials. Will keep you posted ;)

Cat amongst the....

...crows in this case :) While I'm still settling into my new pad here in Scarborough I've pulled out some of my favourite photos to work on. That had to include this glorious out-take from last years crow sessions.

I'm thinking of using my new favourite pencils, Wolffs carbon, for the cat as it is a fantastic velvety black and slightly softer so it should give me the fuzzy focus I'm after. The crows will be picked out in charcoal to give a harder edge and, believe it or not, a different kind of black :)

I'm also tempted to do this in two sizes- 3 x 4" and 6 x 8" partly because I like working in miniature and partly because I think a smaller version would work well with the exisiting crow drawings already on sale in my Etsy store.

I'm hoping to be working on this at the weekend- will keep you posted :)