Dog days

Almost finished my Christmas commissions - just one last one to do (unless someone rings me two days before Christmas with a request for a piece of artwork - and that wouldn't be the first time!). I'm pleased with my little pencil drawing of this female lakeland terrier and really enjoyed doing it (don't worry, I haven't left the world of erotica for long, just a brief sojourn into the land of Vanilla, I'll be back again shortly, I promise!!). Although I try to do a white crayon on black card erotic drawing most weeks, its not the same as a normal graphite pencil drawing on white background. I suppose the result of both is a simple tonal drawing showing lights and darks, shape and form, but my pencil drawings tend to have more detail in them and I'm building up from white to deepest darks, whereas the white on black drawings are picking out the pure light on the subject and leaving the rest to the imagination in the black of the background, and thereby giving more of a feeling of mystery to the picture. So a while since I've drawn in the way of this pencil drawing, and I enjoyed doing it very much, as a bit of light relief, I suppose. I've done so many of these that I don't need to put much depth of thought into it, I tend to work on it almost automatically - deciding on the composition, and what size, drawing out the outline, working out the background, and then I start filling the image with tone, building up from the lights to the darks, and creating texture within the image as I go. Using a hard 3H pencil for shiny surfaces, an HB or B for the main detail and soft pencils from a 2B, and 3B up to a deep 6B for darks and grainy texture, going over it with the 3H pencil again if I want REALLY deep darks with depth of tone, as the pencil covers the surface of the paper and covers the white. I can play some good drawing music, something with a good beat to it, that gets me moving, and on with the picture. Easy enough! And I must have got something right, as the woman who commissioned it was delighted with it and is talking about commissioning me for another painting in the new year! Yay!!

And so on to the second dog portrait..... this one in paint, not pencil.... so colour to consider in this one, which makes it more of a challenge...... mmmm......