For a change I thought I'd focus just on the wildlife art today and show you methodically what I have done (a bit of a novelty for me) after a 4 o'clock start with Willow I decided sleep was a waste of time and got on with the leopard portrat instead. So here goes, above I have completed the mars black and light sienna undertones, as I explained yesterday this was a bit of a mind numbing task but the image emerging on the page so quickly was such a bonus.

So I then added a light brown in the spaces, this almost gives a shadow to each hair and gives the fur more definition and a real look. Still a long way to go though...

so to give the fur it's golden tinge I used raw sienna all over, again the colour just sits in the gaps left so it does look like flecky fur (if that makes sense), now the coat looks more fluffy but I need to add some shadows so I use burnt umber to create shadows and darker areas, I have only done this near the ear so far and must continue all over but on this same area I went back over with a flesh pink pencil to fill any more gaps, this adds a few highlights and also light umber to ensure every gap was filled. I just need to do this all over now. I seem to have a formulation with the colours, I try an area with all the colours I think are needed and then simply copy the order I lay down the colours with, I'm not sure if I need to keep the order of colours the same but maybe the fur will not turn out the same if I swap them about, but I stick to it to the order religiously. I hadn't realised I did this until I lost the raw sienna colour and wouldn't continue with the other colours until I had found it and put a layer down.

Apologies for the lack of consistency with the lighting on the shots, one was taken last night, one was taken very early (pre-dawn) this morning and the final one in daylight near the patio window. I can't take it outside as we've had hail stones and thunder today so it could get a bit wet!!! Anyway I hope that goes to show how I work, I don't always work the same way twice but I hadn't realised how regimented I was with the order of colours. I told you I wasn't the natural arty type, everything is mathematical for me!

Ater yet another 5 o'clock start thanks to my lovely puppy Willow, I gave up the idea of sleep and soldiered on with some wildlife art. It's surprising how much you can get done when no one is bothering you for a cup of tea, clean clothes or pets needing feeding and the television blaring. I decided to go for broke and colour everywhere left with the light sienna colour as this has been the undercoating all over the portrait. After several hours of one colour I think I was going a little stir crazy but at last I could get the idea of how the finished piece of wildlife art would look like.

Then after a grey start and the threat of rain, I got back to the portrait and decided to bore myself to tears with mars black, although I do find it mind numbing to use all the the same colour, it did make the portrait look more 'real' sooner than normal, I usually have an eye completed, then maybe a cheek rather than an all over area marked out so it's good to see but I still like my tried and tested method of area by area, then I know I've got the colours right and the shapes look ok.

And here of course is the lovely Willow, she has discovered football now and is quite relentless at letting you know she wants to play, thing is even though she's a dog, she still plays better than I do!!! I quite like this pose, I know I'll have to do her portrait before long, she's almost adult looking now at just 5 months, and I think this is one to keep just in case I do it sooner rather than later, unless she gets bigger again of course!!!

Plus of course after another scatty five minutes yesterday evening I decided to change all the keywords on my website so no doubt I'll disappear into oblivion for a few months but I've decided to get on with sorting it out properly and am using an seo programme to get things sorted... at long last. It's swings and roundabouts, you spend time on the website and miss out on art or do art which not many people will see if your website isn't 'up there'!!! Well only time will tell!

I've started work on the neck fur on this leopard wildlife art portrait. I've added only a couple of colours so far and will add increasingly darker colours as I work the area more. These few colours alone have meant a few hours work in order to get the fur direction right and give the impression of mass. I've also been back over some of the whiskers with the stabilo white to make them stand out more against the fairly light coloured fur of the face. Still a long way to go though with this one!

Plus I've been out in the garden this evening, we are expecting a weekend full of rain so it was pen cleaning time and all my little friends had a run about in case they don't get much chance tomorrow and Sunday. Click on the picture above to see them all and their names as they are running about!!!

And you can see Willow's certificate she received for passing puppy training, isn't she clever!!!

And now for news on Sweep my poorly guinea pig. I collected him from the vets last night, unfortunately his teeth are not the cause of his weight loss as they were in fact in perfect order, the vet now thinks he has a digestive problem and has prescribed some pro-biotics to help him, alas he won't drink his water with it in nor will he eat his food with it sprinkled on, now I am aware of this I have to go to the chemists to buy a syringe and make him take it, no mean feat as guinea pigs are quite stubborn little monsters when they want to be!

Anyway, here he is trying to get to Treacle, the female guinea pig, doesn't look much wrong with him there though does there!?!

I've also added some more pics to my Flickr account for you to take a look at.

This is our acer tree, unfortunately some wally (Ronnie) planted it in front of the kitchen window, he keeps threatening to cut it down, but it's so odd but pretty I won't let him. Most trees start to green up in spring, this one starts out almost cerise pink, as the summer goes on it goes green, no one knows what it is, Ronnie's brother is a gardener and has a degree but even he is quite literally stumped on this one!

And one of the worst jobs is filling all of the water containers each day for the birds, here you can see the newest assistant on the block, alias Willow, who decided to steal the container instead of help out!!! We found it under a bush later.

And this is a pear tree in the middle of the goose pen, it is a local pear, called the Blakeney Pear Tree, in years gone by, Ronnie's parents planted all of the orchard with pear and apple trees for Bulmers the cider company, (they make my favourite drink of all, Strongbow!) they tended the trees throughout the year for the cider company plus market gardened 10 acres of land. The house next door, which is very small, was Ronnie's father's apple store, now a family live there!!! In past years when there was a bumper crop of pears Ronnie came home to find his geese had eaten them after they had fermented and they were all wobbling about a bit, bet they had a headache!!!

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.

I've added some more images to my flickr account of our pheasants and fowls today. Some of these birds are just stunning, the colours they display during breeding season are so wonderful. I feel as though we live in a zoo, we regularly have visitors to see our animals, today we had two sets, including a little boy who was enamoured with Willy my rabbit, Willy is such a gentle bunny and he loves a fuss, the little boy, Freddie, fussed him for about half an hour and my little rabit sat still and enjoyed it all. Yesterday we had a little girl and her Dad come to visit and she helped me collect the chicken eggs. I feel so lucky to have all my pets I almost hate going to work (even though I have the best job in the world) I could actually stay at home!

Today has also been an internet day, I did lots of SEO on my website, not sure for a while if it will have any effect but my main problem is (and I'm relying on you techies out there to help me) I want to host my blog on my website, got all the instructions etc but the problem here is I have chosen a non-classic template for my blog and so I cannot move my blog. I've tried the simple notion of changing my blog to a classic template, as required by blogger, but when I go to custom domain, advanced settings, the ftp section asking for details does not appear, I just get told to use a classic template....but I am when I try!!! I've thought about exporting to wordpress and exporting back but this is not possible, thought of starting a new blog (ftp stuff comes up then) but my links won't count, I'm almost bald with pulling my hair out. I'm not a computer expert but usually I get there, read lots, find out via the internet but this time I'm stumped. If anyone can point me in the right direction I would so appreciate it. I sound so obsessed, I hate it when I cannot sort things out. I'm afraid my childhood was spent being called 'twenty-questions' as I need to know the answer for everything, I cannot help but ask 'why?' I drive people mad having to understand how things work, I just can't do something and not know why! I loved maths at school just because it was logical, you had to know why otherwise it wasn't do-able. I have a thirst for knowledge, the unfortunate thing is I retain stuff that just isn't useable!!! Even if I ever host my blog on website, I now need to know how!!!

Back to main point of my blog, art... the amur leopard is coming along, but I still have masses of grey on the page and masses more to do! I won't post an update as I think it looks odd but until more gets put down I won't know if it's wrong.

Willow also had child training today, due to the visitor, Freddie, who was introduced to Willow after his interlude with Willy the rabbit, he spent an hour playing chase and football with her and she thoroughly enjoyed it! When Freddie stopped chasing her, she started chasing him!!! Problem was poor little Freddie was none too good with balance and fell over about twenty times underneath Willow!!! Talking of Willow, I also used her as my model for the photo tips bit on my website, she looks a right poser!!!