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artbykarieann
I am a part-time pet portrait and wildlife artist living in the deep dark forest between the Royal Forest of Dean, Herefordshire and the Welsh border. A beautiful and inspiring place to live and create pet portraits and wildlife art.
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Friday 17 April 2009

Amur Leopard by Wildlife Artist Karie-Ann Cooper


More grey and yet more grey. This is becoming rather mind bending now! Next time I approach a portrait like this my planning will be better. I worked on the main body of the leopard first, now I think I may have been better doing the background first instead. With other media certain things have to be done first, acrylics and oils require a background be put in place at the beginning but coloured pencils enable me to work wherever I want to on the portrait, but I feel I've done the exciting bit now and the boring grey stuff is going very slowly so perhaps I should have gotten it out of the way first and maybe it would be less of a chore towards the end!
I've also some good news, a gallery is very interested in my work and I have an appointment to see them in the very near future. I will of course need to do some more pieces as most previous work has been pet portraits which have all been delivered to customers. I really need to build up a portfoilo now and have decided it will be mainly wildlife art so watch this space as new ones appear. I've already sourced a large amount of images which are not in use on the internet so I will be able to produce work which has not been covered by the masses already!
Also we went to visit Ronnie's god-daughters yesterday, Pippa and Laura, here they are...
...with Ted the patterdale cross, who is very miserable and Wesley the horse. Their uncle is Nick Trudgian who is a superbly talented artist specialising in aviation art but I've been able to find out a few tips by way of his sister-in-law, how clever am I!?! We also took Willow and Gypsy with us for tea which put Ted out quite a bit, he growled and grumped and sat in a chair for most of the evening, unfortunately Gypsy decided he needed a scruffing up but they did sort themselves out after a few minutes and yet again, Gypsy ruled the roost. She amazes me, being all of 7 inches high with the attitude of a bulldozer!
Everyone wanted to keep Willow though and she was quite a polite house guest until she stole a metal scrubbing pad from the bathroom and chewed it to bits all over the carpet, oops. Perhaps if she woke them up at 5am yesterday and 5.30am today to go outside they would probably change their minds. Still I shouldn't complaing as it's better than having to clean up after her. Plus all of my new fish (5 diamond angels, 1 blue leopard angel and 6 golden gouramis) have settled in nicely into my fishtank. It's probably a couple of years since I bought any fish and unfortunately fish do not have as long a life span as other pets so always need restocking.
Well it's raining like mad so I'm determined to do some art today of epic proportions. I have a few bits and bobs to sort out, one of which is still Patch from an embarassingly long time ago now, I have promised myself Patch's portrait will be completed this week and it will be then I can get my portfolio looking a bit more spick and span. I'm also still tying to figure how to host my blog on my website so if anyone does have any advice on how to do it a non-classic template I would be very grateful.

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6 comments:

Unknown said...

Wow.... I didn't know you were going to lay down all that slate and I can understand why you wore your pencils and your nerves down to a nub.

Thanks for sharing those photos and story about Willow. I love her spunk!

Gail H. Ragsdale said...

Wonderful news on the gallery! I'm sure your portfolio will be great!

artbykarieann said...

I think I over did the slate now, I'm going to rethink about what to do behind the leopard incase it becomes overpowering, like I said I need more planning next time Sheila. And I am sooooo excited about the gallery Gail, I just cannot wait to get things sorted but I do need a bigger portfolio, work, work and more work!!

Colette Theriault said...

I totally understand how you feel about too much of one color/subject...it gets to you after a while!!
If I may make a suggestion, why not try breaking the color by adding a blurred out background using some complementing greens? I'd make the background very out of focus and the green would make the leopard pop right out and break the grey slate. You could also try another color but such as contrasting blues in different tones but stay away from oranges and greys.
Hope this helps!
Colette

Colette Theriault said...

By the way, I should have mentioned on the last post that the work you've done so far is great and I love it! Good luck with the gallery exhibit and keep on drawing!!

artbykarieann said...

I'm going to put the leopard aside for a while so I can come back to it with fresh eyes I think, perhaps I should have planned the background a little better instead of jumping in with both feet and hands!

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