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 :)

Puppy love

I've been busy the last week with a custom piece- the first pet portrait I've done in many years. I rather went off the idea after struggling with a lot of very fuzzy photos taken by proud owners so I insisted on seeing the image first.

However, when confronted by this little face, I couldn't really say no :) You'll have to excuse the image being a little dark- he was being shipped to New York asap so I only had time to take a quick snap myself of the finished piece.

He was done as usual in charcoal pencil on Langton watercolour paper, the drawn area is about 8" square. The white whiskers were picked out with a scalpel blade after the background had been filled in.

I've just heard he's arrived safely across the pond so am waiting for news from his new owner :)

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 :)