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.

Well, here we are at the finish line. I have decided to change the name to 'Matriarch' - I thought it simple yet a more discriptive name as the focus is on the Matriarchal elder protecting and watching over the herd.

I have added some dust coming up from the feet of the elephants to dictate movement, as they were looking a little stationary.

This will be released as a limited edition print of 500 at a size of 42 x 30cm for £35.

I believe I just might be venturing further into the world of the Elephants!

Getting there...

We are getting a little closer to the finishing line with this one. I have almost completed the background elephants. As I mentioned in yesterday's post, you can now see how light I plan on making the background. I will probably still need to tweak the contrast a little once the floor is done.

Here is a close up of the rear elephants:



My plan when this is complete is to release it as a Limited Edition Giclee print of 500 copies for around £35.

So, a little more information about myself and what it is that I do. Having spent the last 5 years trying to work as an artist in my spare time. I have recently (and finally) taken the plunge, quit my unbelievably dull job in HR (which I only started 2 year ago for a few weeks until my art business took off!), bought a Golden Retriever puppy for daytime companionship (or, as it turns out, to ensure that I no longer have time to draw), and now work from home as a full time graphite artist.

Now, from what I have seen and researched, there aren't many professional graphite artists around. This may be because once an artist has been asked for the thousandth time "Do you have this in colour?", they all actually switch to a colour medium. Alternatively, there may still be a small gap in the market - obviously, i'm hoping for the latter. The professional graphite artists that do exist are ridiculously talented like Mike Sibley, J D Hillberry, Terry Miller, Armin Mersmann, to name but a few. So, where do I see my work fitting in with theirs? I'll have to think about that one.....

Work in Progress continued

So we are moving along, slowly but surely with the elephants.

I have completed the main three foreground elephants, and will now set about the background elephants. As I mentioned in my last post, the background elephants will be very light compared to the front three. To achieve this, I will switch to harder pencils, only using 2H or harder. This will allow me to maintain a high level of detail.

I am working on this today, so should have another update tomorrow.