Collage done

Did the background collage yesterday.  I plan on painting the figure and chair entirely in acrylic paint.

New canvas

I'm going to start a new collage/acrylic paint piece, this is the outline of what I'm going to do.  I'm hoping to start on the collage work today. This is a very similar pose to my watercolour pencil piece "The Cat Lady".  The original idea for the pose came from a Modigliani painting I saw.

Dachshund

Here is my first attempt at drawing a dog, a short haired Dachshund.  I used pastel pencils on pastel paper.  I loved drawing the eyes and nose the most (and I think it probably shows), the fur I found challenging and also selecting what colours to use, but overall I'm quite pleased with how it turned out.  I just love those eyes!

I discovered a pet portraiture course the other day at the London Art College.  It's a 1 year course and I think I'm going to take it!  They accept overseas students and you can work through the course at your own pace and learn how to draw and paint animals in a variety of mediums.

My youngest in charcoal

I'm really quite happy with the way this portrait of Lachlan turned out.  I drew it last night and it took about 1.5 hours.  I can see now though that I have elongated his features, so that is something I am going to have to work on when drawing children.  I used Faber Castell charcoal pencils on pastel paper, tortillions and paper towel for blending.

Pastel portrait

I decided to have another go at Thomas' portrait but this time with my pastel pencils.  I didn't quite capture his likeness with this one but I enjoyed drawing it so much.  I'm quite pleased with how the skin tone looks, I think there are about 7 colours in the skin alone.  I'm really glad I decided to buy the full set of Faber Castell pencils because I think I'm going to be using these quite a lot :)

Charcoal portrait

On the weekend I bought the magazine "International Artist", what a fantastic magazine and so full of inspiration!  I was particularly inspired by the charcoal portraits of Ellen Milinch.  It got me thinking that this is something I would really love to do too.  Children and babies are of particular interest to me.  So I decided to give it a go myself, I drew a charcoal portrait of my eldest son Thomas when he was 2 years old and this is the result (click on the picture to see a larger version).  I think the paper I chose let me down a bit (just ordinary cartridge paper), so next time I will be using proper charcoal paper and try and render a bit more smoothly.  Otherwise I'm quite happy with it and I think I have captured his essence and expression.  I would actually love to attempt to paint this picture.  I have a canvas that would be the perfect size.  Acrylics or Oils?  I have no idea.  I only have a tiny bit of experience with acrylic and have never used oil paints before.

Chiaroscuro

I  recently bought a book called "The Artist's Complete Guide to Drawing the Head" by William Maughan.  It describes a method of drawing called chiaroscuro where form is established by shadows and light rather than lines.  This is my first attempt at chiaroscuro, I used faber castell pastel pencil in "Indian Red" with just a smidge of "white" pencil here and there for highlights.  I'm quite happy with the results and I will definitely be using this method of drawing again I think.