Pet Portraits and Wildlife Art

Well I'm not very happy, my website has decided to disable me, I am not allowed to publish my own site now!!! I have contacted my host but they cannot find out what has gone wrong, my home page is all stripey with all the header links missing so anyone looking will not be able to get any further than the home page. Not very helpful at all. The internet is a great vehicle when it works well, mine always seems to be breaking down though!!!

My little buzzard attacked chicken is on the mend, she stumbled about a bit for two days, she did look a bit worse for wear and I thought she may not survive, luckily today she seems much better and is sat upright by a broody hen and walks about (although a bit wobbly) so she has a hen to sit by and pass the day with plus she is happily ensconced in a wooden summer house with big windows and a bed of straw. What more could she ask for! Also I've been working on my tiger portrait today, I have still got a long way to go and I think I should put it to one side soon to continue with my commissions. Plus it's work again tomorrow, we are now in Ketford which is just across the forest from Red Marley, it seems to be such a long time since we worked in a local area, but I'm not complaining, being out and about in the wood is so much better than being sat in an office any day.

Well I've had some feedback about Ollie's portrait and it is good news, it seems Ollie's owner was very pleased with her surprise birthday gift so that's a great relief!!! I'm currently hoping to have a page with my pet portraits displayed on a popular dog website so hopefully it will prove popular for both myself and the dog website, fingers crossed, it's still in the very early stages so far but it sounds quite promising plus I'm trying to figure out how I want my background to look on the tiger portrait for the pet portrait competition but I cannot seem to get it quite right, I know what I want but cannot get it down on paper, plus I have a few commissions building up to get on with now so I'm a bit of a busy bee at the moment, my day job does get in the way a bit you know!!! Talking of the day job I passed my assessment for brushcutting, clearing saws and strimming, I sound professional now (it's not true at all) so I should be able to do a good job - who are they kidding!!! And most importantly of all, I saved one of my warren chickens from certain death yesterday, I heard a commotion in the garden so ran outside to find a buzzard about 3 foot from the back door and I am not exaggerating in anyway, sat on a chicken trying to rips it's wings apart, I grabbed the chicken just as the buzzard took off, I would not believe they were so big without seeing one with it's wings out, and how cheeky was it!!! My chicken had a fuss and is now in chicken hospital until her wing gets better, although I'm not sure if she'll ever flap her right wing properly again. Oh what fun country life is!!!

A bit of a rush commission, meet Ollie, a lovely looking horse with unusual colouring which proved a bit of a challenge. Due to it being a surprise I was unable to post any work in progress until Ollie's owner had received the portrait.

I began by drawing in the basic outline of Ollie, as this is only my second horse commission I am still a little unsure of a horse's anatomy so wanted to make sure all the muscles etc were in the correct place. At this point I used four different colours to start to get the correct colouring and depth, I had not put in high and low lights so there were to be several more layers added later.

Below you can see I moved across to Ollie's cheek, I wanted to make sure I was getting the shape of his head correct. I added a few more layers here to the original four colours, I added a darker brown, some brown black to create more shadows plus I burnished a little to start to show up the sheen on his fur. Still a long way to go at this point though.
Below I started to add a little of the black background, this made a major difference to the look of the portrait as it made Ollie's colours stand out much more, it created a really good contrast. I also worked on Ollie's ears which were very pricked and apparently a good indicator of his personality. A very alert horse by all accounts.

Well, it seems ages since I made a new post but I have been busy, I've been working on my tiger portrait for the pet portrait forum competition, all top secret so as not to give anything away yet but I have taken shots as it's been progressing and so far I'm pleased with how far I've moved on. Also I've been working on my second horse portrait which is a surprise present so I will post it after it has been received. And... I've started to build a new website, since starting the tiger portrait I've decided I would like to produce more wildlife portraits so I'm in the process of building a site solely to showcase wildlife and nature art, I've decided to seperate it from the pets and people simply for site optimization. Back to work now, plenty to do and hopefully I'll be able to add images very soon.

Not much to update pencil portrait wise, I've given in to temptation and started work on an entry into the pet portrait forum competition so nothing can be given away at this point, it's all top secret as we all have to put our own version of the image together but I will keep work in progress images and will post as soon as the deadline has passed. The main image is of two tigers and so far all I've managed is part of one head so I think it's going to be a long uphill battle to complete it.

Anyway, we all got wet when the heavens opened so it's an evening indoors drying off I'm afraid.

A few sickies have been pulled today, both Tess and Cass, the golden retrievers are off ill, at 15 they are probably due a few days off from all those years of work anyway. Hopefully they'll be back soon, I miss Cass barking at us to keep us moving, I did say she is a bit of a slave driver. And some bad news, my pet cockeral Fred died yesterday, he received the honour of a full burial in the garden. Now BB the rabbit has no friend to run about with now. I was quite gutted as he would crow when he heard my voice and I could hand feed him. Poor old Freddy.