Black on Grey on White

The coffee shakes finally wore off (bad time management there!) and the finishing touches were finally drawn with a steady hand. Here's "Elbow Room". The wee story behind this drawing is the direct result of Albert Camus' fantastic quote " freedom is nothing else but a chance to be better ".  SO, I decided to take a (well needed) break from commission and exhibition work, let go of the various pressures and see what my mind would give me. I became deaf to "what might be nice to draw" and set myself instead a biggish technical challenge.  How do you or rather how would I give a vertical line energy ? "Elbow Room" is taken from reference photos I have had (stashed away in both my mind and studio) for over 7 years. This is the foreleg of a Rh.D. kaltblutt stallion stationed at the Warendorf National Stud (Landgestuet Warendorf) . I used pencil (2B & 6B) for the entire drawing. The shadow on the left leg is "glazed" over with l...

Another "in between post"... I've had too much coffee and have the shakes. Not ideal for the finishing touches I am tackling. Good time to stop and think . Millions of peoples lives devastated. Nature is lashing out. Helplessness and grief radiating. Pondering, reflecting and now reacting. Power. We all have very little in the light of the current natural disasters that have hit Burma and China. The Power to react: we all have. I have chosen to click..to use the power at my finger tips. I have never been politically inclined but I guess this makes me an.... online activist? Feels quite OK... I f you would like to find out what the heck I'm rambling on about check out the Hunger Site. Well worth the visit and I 'm sure, like me, you'll end up clicking more than once.. .

    The week-end has come to an end and before the week takes off with speed here's a little "in-between post" posts. - A post with a strong ohhhh loooook factor! This is our wee Jess. 6 weeks old. A wee cutie, a fluffy ball. She is the new addition to the clan.  The girls, as you can well imagine, are over the moon and so, I believe, is Jess. Kittens seem to adore the clumsy attention that young children poor on them, the over enthusiastic hugs and well meant over doses of cat milk.   Well, needless to say that my Mac's hard drive is pretty full of new (feline) pics, all of which of course will now need to be processed. There are also new drawings brewing at the back of my mind... Who could resist? I'll keep you posted. Her colouring is "bang-on" with Black on Grey on White's colour scheme...I will have to find a VIP place for her here. Thinking caps is on. Cheerio and sleep tight.

I proudly present Rien Poortvliet (1932- 1995) Rien was born in Schiedam, Holland. (His name may not ring a bell straight away but mention the word Gnome and bells sound, resound, loudly, happily...) Rien's "shortish" Biography His parents were strict Dutch Reformists. They had Rien's future firmly mapped out and were quite opposed to the idea of their oldest son going to study art. Rien's talent was apparent at a very early age. After finishing his primary education he went to work for an advertising agency. (Where he was able to let his talent mature and learn the "in's and out's" of the publishing world.) Poortvliet's heart really lay in illustration and it was by the end of the 1960s that he felt it was time to resign from publishing and change career. He became an independent illustrator. Not having enough work when starting out on this new journey (rings loads of loud bells for many of us out there!) he made ends meat by publishing a ...

Here they are, two peas in a pod, cheeky, tweaked and framed.   Basti and Titus have been approved and will be making there way off to Germany. Kept my pencil away from them over the week end (most of you have no doubt noticed the revamped blog.... This is a direct result of not allowing myself to go back too soon to tweak). Hope you like the new look I've given my "Black on Grey on White".  So: spent today, tweaking and polishing a few areas, scanning and recording all info for my database. To get a clean and a web perfect image of my work  I took two individual scans (300 dpi ) of the drawing.  I then I joined them and cleaned the new image using  Photoshop Element s.   I have this Photoshop version on trial for the next 27 days.  It's good.  Actually, I am pretty sure I will be purchasing it. It seems to fit the bill perfectly.  Between you and me, I am quite chuffed as it is a fraction of the price of the full blown Photoshop (of which I would only end up ...

Here they are: pretty much finished. I spent another 4-5 hours on Basti. Working on his ear and teeth mainly and achieving a little more shape to his head and nose. The result so far is quite OK. Now I put the drawing out of sigh. Not seeing it for a couple of days means: fresh eyes, being able to instantly pick out any mistakes, sternghten the weaknesses and/or "not so strong"patches. During this time (of absence) I contact the client(sending them a scan for their approval), get the paper work done, process the commission (size, medium, date...) into my database, clean the scan, organise the framing and finally publish it to my portfolio website. Here for your viewing is a raw (dirty) scan of Basti and Titus. The portrait will still be tweaked I am sure of that.(I can allready see a few spots!) Off to find a nice safe place for it hide for a few days. Have an excellent week-end!

After reaching a bit of standstill on Monday, I carried on by starting with the eye on the second Jack Russell . Basti is much darker, has slightly bigger and darker eyes as well as a straight ear. For the eye I sketched it out with a 2B, drew the pupil in using a 5B and I went from there. When drawing eyes I find it very important to keep picturing them in my mind (how I remember them)as opposed to what I see in the reference photograph. It keeps them real . This true for every feature but just a tad more so for eyes: they make or break a portrait ! The pencil used for the darker areas was my clutch filled with Cretacolor 3B. I only let go of it in order to pick up my 2B to draw the darker shading of the tongue. At the end of this phase I have probably clocked up another 12 hours (give or take a few minutes!) The final stretch is just around the corner...will try and get it posted for the week-end. Thanks for watching, p.s: questions and queries are of course very welcome, I realis...