Pet Portraits and Wildlife Art

Work is now beginning on Officer Dibble and Fifi, these two are to be full bodied and on one large portrait. Just this small part has taken 3 1/2 hours already. I always mean to log how long a portrait takes and then forget so hopefully for this one I'll be a bit more reliable!!! I still have to add a few more touches to Dolly and Peggy but the light under a day light bulb is not the best for graphite as it reflects so I'll wait until the day light is better and get on with that today. This portrait is going to be a lot of hard work, Dibble, to the untrained eye looks like a black furry cat, however I think he has every colour of the rainbow in his fur, so far I've added lilac, loganberry, a few greys, browns, fawn, cream and a bit of blue....but absolutely no black!!! He really is furry and I bet he stays nice and warm no matter how cold the weather is. Doesn't he look a laid back fellow!!!I have now drawn in Fifi as well, I couldn't resist Fifi's eyes and had to colour them in even though I am nowhere near beginning the second cat. I have put in lilac and pale grey undercolours on Dibble and all the pencil strokes are in the direction of his fur (all over the place!!) and I am now adding further layers of collour working down his tummy.I've added a couple more layers of the grey and lilac, then added loganberry, brown, cream, blue and dark grey to get to this stage. I am trying to work the entire area with the basic colours to go back to 'top up' areas but I keep noticing bits I need to add this and that to so I'm going around in circles a bit. It seems to have taken ages to get here as there are so many colours in Dibble's coat. It seems as though I've added twenty thousand layers to get to this stage. I now plan to start work on Fifi, the lower cat, and then I will go back to Dibble to add colour where I feel it is needed. Thankfully Fifi is a lot smoother and hopefully it will not be quite as complicated to show the fur going in the right direction.This photo was taken yet again under a daylight bulb so does not look its best but I wanted to show how work is progressing on Fifi. This is about 4 layers of colour on the darkest areas and I'm sure I'll be adding more as time goes by.