Seeing eye to eye

I've been working on my latest dog portrait commission this week and am slightly annoyed that I've had to re-start the painting again as the original paper I started with buckled when I was less than a third of the way through the painting. If I'd carried on it might have got worse, it may not though, but I wasn't prepared to take that chance because I know I've got many hours of work to put into it and decided cutting my losses at this point was probably better than carrying on and making a hash of it. So I've re-drawn it and started painting again on line and wash board, but I don't normally use it and I'm finding it far more absorbant than the Bockingford watercolour paper I usually use, so its soaking up every tiny bit of paint very quickly. Still, I'm steps forward now and have done the base painting more or less, so the colour is on and now I need to build up the depth of colours through the fur on the dogs head. I've left doing the eyes until now as well as I prefer to do it when I've got to the mid point. So, I've had a "blind" dog as the empty eye sockets are still blank paper. So, deep breath, and hope to get the next bit right, cos if I get it wrong the whole thing will look bad. And ...............paint the eyes. Stand back and look to see how it's gone and...........................WOW! The whole painting comes alive! The dog can see! The eyes are liquid, with the light shining in them. The eyeballs sit in their sockets and the whole painting comes alive!!! I'm a happy bunny!!!! Yay!!!! But I don't know why I'm surprised, the eyes are the windows to the soul. If they show life, then I've captured the essence of the subject.

And just to add that Hornymaleuk has contacted me with a view to him wanting to pose for me again. Ok, so he obviously wasn't too put off with the last pose (and this is my posting about it here) then! (or the ones before that! - and this is my version of that). It's a while since I've drawn him, and he'll be posing with my usual model again..... so what poses shall I put them in? MMmm...... I need to think. Oh, this is going to be fun!!!!

Attributes

A good start to the year - my one hundredth blog post! Yay!!!

Getting back into the mind set of being an erotic artist, after doing two dog commissions, and I've been thinking about what makes an image "erotic". I know when I look at someone I see various attributes of their persona that I would enhance to make my image erotic, but, would another erotic artist see necessarily the same things? Perhaps. Perhaps not. And would the person being drawn consider the attributes I see as their own best features? Perhaps. Perhaps not. I might think their eyes are striking, especially the written invitation in them, but the person in question might think their mouth is their best feature. MMm........ So considering myself, I think I know my own "best attributes"..... but do others see in me something I don't see in myself? Perhaps. Perhaps not....... So, do we need to be drawn by someone else for them to pick out our essence, the part of us we might feel inside, but we don't see in ourselves when we look in the mirror? Perhaps we do. And, maybe, there will be some pleasant surprises................