Stephen

After an awful lot of umm-ing and aaah-ing, I've decided to put one of my very favourite pieces up for sale.  Meet Stephen- the only one of my creations to ever give me actual nightmares until I got him out onto paper. I never knew you could be nagged by your own imaginings....if that's what he is of course :)

 He's worked as usual in charcoal pencil on watercolour paper but in this case, most of the hours went into working out how on earth he was put together in the first place. Sometimes I get an idea that comes through in such a very definite way that there is no arguing with it so it was more of an engineering project than anything.

He's named for the Alice Cooper track of the same name which I happened to be listening to when he first crept around the corner. That'll teach me.... To begin with all I had was the impression of something that had maybe once been a person but had become something else. Oh, and a lot of arms.

He has two sets of walking arms facing forward and two back but with an additional limb section so one of my first tasks was figuring out which joints went where and modifying bits as needed. I spent many days on good old google for that !

Then, it was choosing a position for that first drawing. I always do one of just the thing itself so I have everything clear in my head. Soon I hope to be keeping you all amused with pictures of him out and about. Are your windows shut by the way? :)

Just to give you an idea of the lengths I had to go to to get that one picture, here's a shot of my sketchbook page with the bones in each arm marked out and numbered to make sure I didn't get anything on backward. Possibly the most fascinating bit of Stephen is his face but as I already have a portrait of him I'll get into that in my next post along with a bit more about our new friends' habits....

Going, going....gone :)

 This has been a good week for my Etsy shop- six pictures went over the weekend including this trio of figure studies I had listed. These had been in my studio for a couple of years now and I'd debated what to do with them. I was really pleased with them at the time but like many artists, my style has changed a lot and they just didn't fit.

 I decided to put them on at a lower price to distinguish them from my newer, more detailed work hoping this would entice someone to give them a good home - and it worked. Though I haven't made a huge profit, I have now cleared quite a bit of storage space for new pieces I'm working on and I've been able to invest in more frames etc.

 These were among the first images I did in charcoal pencil, worked on Daler Rowney textured watercolour paper which doesn't allow for very fine detail but adds a lovely finish.

I won't be repeating these as I rarely do figure work these days, and I now use a smooth hot pressed paper but it's nice to know they'll still be around on someones' wall, making me and the customer happy :)

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 :)