Squeeze Stile Finished

This squeeze stile is finally finished. It has been a lot of stone to draw but strangely enjoyable! This is the second in a series of stile drawings, so there are many more to get through.

The finished piece measures 38x26cm.

The weather hits again!

Wednesday was one of the only outdoor shows that I had left this year after the relentless rain has seen to it that all of the others have been cancelled.

The Borrowby show made it without a cancellation, but the weather seemed to have put people off anyway. It was a very quiet day, but I thought I would show you my set up.

This is the first time I have used this marquee since my last one was blown to bits by the wind (I would recommend avoiding ez-pop up marquees at all costs). This is a much sturdier marquee and won't be going anywhere in the wind.

We also took Brinkey, the dog, to this one for the first time. He has just turned one, so has been a little too crazy to take in the past. Even though it was a quiet day for us, he seemed to enjoy all of the attention - I probably should have been selling him rather than prints!! (Don't worry, I wouldn't really).

I only have one more outdoor show before the rest of the year's are indoors, so we will see if that one goes ahead.

Old Stile by the Ure

I finally got this one finished after a bit of a delay due to a bad neck.

I had planned on getting it finished, printed and mounted in time for tomorrow's Aldborough and Boroughbridge Show, but, that, along with 4 other shows that I had over the next couple of weeks has been cancelled due to the weather. At least I can take the rest of the afternoon off and don't have to frantically mount prints up!

Anyway, this one measures just under 30x40cm and took approximately 50 hours to complete.

"Duplex" finished

This one is finally finished. It has taken a day longer than I planned because I had to darken the entire right side further to contrast more with the sun drenched left side.

The finished piece measures 40x30cm.

The birds are home...

I didn't get any work done on this over the weekend (what? I can take a break!), so here is todays work so far. The birds are in, but may require a little tweaking.

The right hand side of the barn shouldn't take too much longer, so I hope to have this complete either today or tomorrow.

2 Birds and a Barn

Having taken a short break to get some celebrity drawings complete, i'm back to the farm themed work. This piece sees an old delapidated barn home to a couple of sparrows.

So far I have only blocked in the darkest areas. The larger area of the barn showing on the right will be completely in shadow, so this one is going to use up quite a bit of graphite!

Bond and Prison Break

I haven't posted anything for about a week, so I thought I would show you what I was up to. I have been getting another couple of celebrities drawn for Kadinsky Art, a Celebrity Art publisher.

Here we have Daniel Craig as James Bond and below Wentworth Miller as Michael Scofield from Prison Break.

Back to the animals now...

Finally finished

This one has taken slightly longer than I had planned, but is finally finished. I haven't come up with a name for this as yet, but i'm sure it will come to me soon.

This took approximately 50 hours in total to complete and measures approx 40x20cm.

Barn almost finished

So we are almost over to the right hand side and, with that, the completion of the barn.

I don't know why I haven't already but the chicken in the window really need completing, so i'll get to that tomorrow...

Wood, wood, and more wood

Moving quite slowly with this one, and working from the middle outward for some reason! I'm going to get all of the background wood in place before starting on the foreground animals, that way I can ensure I set their tone at the right level to stand out from all of this mid-tone.

Back to the farm work

After a bit of a break to expand the Puppy Collection (which I will probably return to after this piece), I am back to the farm work. This time it is to revisit the sheep and chickens in a barn setting.

I have been playing around with this barn setting for quite some time now, trying to get the composition to my liking. There have been cows, horses and even dogs playing in front of the barn, but a few shots of some lambs at a recent agricultural show (the one where my marquee blew to bits so I was unable to trade) finally gave me to composition I was after.

I am about 4 hours into it so far and just working on blocking in the darkest areas of the drawing. From here I will begin work on all of that wood.

Black Labrador Puppy

Here is my latest addition to the Puppy Collection, a Black Labrador to go with the Chocolate Lab.

I find that, no matter how many breeds of puppy I draw, I always get asked for ones that I do not have. Because of this, I have made it my mission to get as many breeds added to my collection as possible. Of course, I could draw a hundred breeds and someone will always want a breed that I don't have!

Maybe, to get a Yellow Labrador added to my collection, I should just lighten this one in Photoshop - what do you think!?! No? Ok, onto the next...

Chocolate Labrador Finished

Speeding towards the finish line of this one, the Chocolate Labrador is complete. This has taken approximately 25 hours to complete and will be added to my Puppy Collection.

Now onto the Black Labrador...

A bit of a leap of an update here. The face is now complete and I should be able to speed through the body to have this complete by the end of the day.

I like to set myself targets as to when a drawing should be finished. Many artists avoid this, believing that a drawing should take as long as it takes. I totally agree with this, but have got to the stage where I can gauge roughly how long a drawing will take before commencement - I then set a target slightly shorter than that time. This way, I am forced to spend more time drawing that I otherwise would.

This one should be done within 3 days of starting, which will give it about 25 hours (fairly standard for my Puppy Collection). When I have done these without targets, they have often taken a week - a lot of procrastinating goes on!

Chocolate Labrador Puppy

Onwards with the Puppy Collection, I am adding the Labradors to the collection. Beginning with this Chocolate Lab, I have a Black Lab lined up. It's going to be a little tricky ensuring I capture the subtle differences between the two, especially depicting the difference in tone between the two in black and white.

Boxer Finished

The Boxer Puppy is finally finished.

This is a relatively small one at only 18x20cm.

The original is currently availably, as are Open Edition prints.

Still Boxing

Yesterday's work. I have left the ear half complete to demostrate how I tackle short, light hair. You can see that I have begun by drawing in the separating lines of the hair. These lines follow the direction of hair growth, whilst maintaining a level of randomness.

From this point I will add some darker lines where the hair separates more and then add tone over the top.

You can see how much the lines make up the form of the subject as the ear already has a degree of form, even though it has no shading or tone as yet. I would hope to have most of the face finished by the end of the day.

Boxer continued

Here is yesterday's work. I didn't get as much done as i should have, but the forehead is complete with all it's folds of skin. I will work down to the nose and it should be plain sailing form there on.

Straight onto the next one. This is the beginnings of a Boxer puppy.

Should be a fairly quick one this.

Springer Spaniel Finished

Finally finished with this one. I have kept the background to just a light shadow on the ground - I want this to sit with my Puppy Collection and head studies, so didn't want any background to distract the viewer.

The finished piece is approx 21 x 30cm.

Onto a Boxer now.

Springer Spaniel

A bit of a leap with this one from the last update. I'm almost there, just the white of the chest and one more leg to go. I should have this finished by the end of the day.

Springer Spaniel

I've been absent for quite a while now renovating our garden, so there hasn't been much drawing recently.

I've finally begun a new piece to add to my ever-expanding dog collection. This is a young Springer Spaniel with that alert stare so ubiquitous to this breed.

This is going to be followed by a Boxer study and a Border Terrier.

'Solitude' - complete

This is finally complete and ready for printing, mounting and preparing for this Easter weekend's Game Fair at Selby. If anyone is in the area, drop in and say hi (or purchase loads of prints!!). I will be showing all of my recent farm studies as well as my wildlife and dog prints. It is a 4 day event so if you come on Monday, I may look like a zombie!

Getting there...

We are slowly but surely moving along with this. I had hoped to get this finished on Saturday, but I didn't get as much drawing time as I had hoped. I have made a start on the foreground grass, mud and moss, which is the harder area. The background grass should be relatively quick to draw (the good old scribble technique!).

I need to have this finished and mounted up for an Agricultural Show I am at this Friday in Selby.

No more stone walls!

If anyone sees me starting a drawing with stone in it, please stop me. My hand is destroyed by this barn today. I don't know what it is about the action of drawing stone, but it take so much more out of me than most other things.

Of course, there is still a little stone wall in the bottom right corner, but i'm sure I can handle that...tomorrow!

Just the grass to go with this now and we should be almost there.

A little more

Today's work. The wall is in and the stone barn is beginning to take shape. I should have the barn complete tomorrow.

Third horse

Yesterday's update. The third horse in the piece is almost done. I will need to tweak the tone a little once the background is in.
You can now just about make out the outline of the stone barn and stone wall (a lot of stone to get through...again!).

It's been a few days since my last post. I have been working on a commission which I couldn't really post here.

This is the beginnings of a new piece - still on the farm scene, but this time it's horses. These two aren't too detailed as they're only about 4cm each in length. They will be in the background, on top of a hill. The entire piece should finish up at about 30x20cm.

Cows Finished

The cows are finally finished.

The end result finished up at 22x32cm, slightly smaller than I usually work to, but that is plenty big enough for all that foliage and grass!

Still cowing around

I'm a couple of days late with this upload, so I may indulge you with two updates today.
I only have the foliage of the tree left and a bit of messing around with the contrast in places and I should be done...definitely by the end of today!

Grass, grass and more grass

There certainly is a lot of grass to get through here. I have almost done the easy part, the grass in the distance (let's face it, that just requires a bit of scribble), but still have the grass in the foreground that will require more detail. Plus, there is a lot of negative drawing to get through to finish the foliage of the tree...

taking shape..

A few more hours done today on this. I appear to be procrastinating when it comes to the grass and foliage (come on, there's a lot of it!) but, now that I have drawn everything else, I don't have much of a choice but to dive right in.

Anyone want to finish this for me???

MOOving onwards

Two updates in one day!! I am working hard today, aren't I?

Another few hours done - you can probably tell that i'm doing everything I can to avoid the foliage and grass. I'm not quite ready to face it right now. I think I will continue with the barn and fence, leaving all of the foliage, grass and hay until the end (at which point I will go crazy)

Back to the farm

After a short celebrity break, we are back to the farm. What can be seen here is only about a quarter of the entire drawing, but this is all I have done so far. This is about 3 hours into it.

I have been planning on drawing cows for some time now, but have only just managed to come up with an interesting composition (at least I think it is interesting!)

There will be quite a bit of black in this piece, so I may need to order more leads!

Lost no more

Well, i'm putting this one to bed. This was a slight diversion for this blog, so I will hopefully get back to some animals tomorrow.

Lost a little big longer

A few more hours on this today and we're about half way through - just three more characters left. Once the other three are done, I will revisit all of them and tweak the contrasts and darks to get the balance right across the entire drawing.

I must admit, I find motivation and concentration much harder to maintain when drawing multiple people in one piece. I'm not sure why, but I don't have the same problem with animals, nor do I have a problem spending 5 times as long on a scenic drawing, but when it comes to people, I struggle after the first two. I tend to get around this by taking a LOT of breaks.

Okay, break time....

Still Lost!

Ok, so this morning's post was a little stingy - only giving you a couple of eyes and a nose. Here is a couple more hours work and Matthew Fox is finished. I'm not going for major detail here as each character is quite small. Just 5 more to go...

Lost

Ok, so its looks as though i'm not going to get started on the next animal drawing within the next couple of days, so I thought I would give you a sneak peak at a celebrity drawing I am working on. This drawing will include 6 of the main characters from the series 'Lost'.

It's going to be quite a few heads to draw (which is probably why i've been procrastinating on this one for so long). I'm only a couple of hours into it here, so the shading is still a little sketchy. This section is about 10 x 8cm - the finished drawing will be 40x30.

I've always enjoyed the celebrity work, and find it nice to switch between animals and people whenever I can. When finished, this will be available as a print from Kadinsky Art. Kadinsky publish around 30 of my celebrity prints, ranging from classics such as The Beatles, Muhammad Ali and Marlon Brando, to more recent celebs such as Russell Crowe, Jessica Simpson and David Beckham.

Kids - Goat Study

I'm still working on the Lost drawing which I may post here once i've got a little more done. In the mean time somthing from last month. This is another on the farm series of 3 young goats doing...pretty much nothing! Having drawn many animals, most notably dogs, I was interested to explore the difference in fur texture, eyes, nose and personality of goats. I settled upon 3 very different tonal subjects.

To provide more 3-dimensionality to the drawing I faded out the middle goat's rear into a light mist. I have a tendancy to fade my drawings out into the white of the paper, but I found fading it to a light mist worked really well with this piece. I cropped the drawing fairly harshly to help the composition.

The original drawing took approximately 25 hours to complete.

I will hopefully begin another animal drawing tomorrow, so should have the beginning of something to show.

The Great Escape

No drawing done yesterday but, as promised, I am going to post something. This is the last drawing before the hens - another one in the farm collection.

This is called 'The Great Escape' and shows 4 piglets making a run for freedom through a ricketty gate. The stonework, whilst being a challenge, was somewhat dull once I was about half way down but once you've started...

Rules The Roost

Well, it's been months since I last posted - haven't gotten off to the best start with the blog! So here is my (very late) new years resolution...I will update the blog every day, even if I haven't done any drawing on that day. If I have, I will post an update, no matter how small, messy, or poor the update may be.

To get the ball re-rolling, here is a piece that I finished yesterday called 'Rules The Roost'. It shows a Rooster watching over his hens as they happily feed. This is another addition to the ever-expanding Farm collection which already includes goats, pigs and sheep (I will post those also).

I am about to begin a 'Lost' drawing for a celebrity art publisher - i'm not sure i'll post that here, so I guess, due to the new year's resolution that I just made, I will have to start another farm piece also, just so that I have something to post.