Pet Portraits and Wildlife Art

Almost got a leg now!!! This still looks a bit flat on the leg as although I've added many layers I still need to add more shadows to give it a bit more shape. I've also worked a bit more on the back area so things are beginning to look a bit more whole! I would say the front leg took about 4 hours last night and the back took an hour and a half this afternoon, it's a lot of time to spend doing this and I can see why art is so very expensive to buy, the effort and time it takes to produce something is phenominal plus behind the scenes there are the initial sketches which are rarely thought of by a client let alone seen (but which I don't do, I just work straight on my sketch and not draw out different versions) then there is the actual studying of an image, I find myself lost looking at some images seeing which colours, shading and shapes are involved and this of course adds time as well. It would be so nice to be compensated even the minimum wage for a portrait but none would ever be sold! The good thing is though that I love doing them, they keep me occupied for hours on end so if they never get sold and simply hang on my own wall at least I have an individiual piece but also one that I know I'll have chosen myself!

We also bought a back for our truck which means we can put three dogs in the back with lots of room and manage to keep the seats clean and can travel without wearing a fur coat from the dogs! I'm off to buy a big dog cushion so they can travel in luxury! I tried to take a photo of the back to show you the new toy but it's already too dark outside so I'll try to do it this weekend. I've also decided that as we have a new vehicle, I'm having new signs made up, they will fit better as the current ones are stuck out over the ridges of the truck which does distort the images (that's my reasoning and I'm sticking to it!) so when I get those doen I'll post them as well.

I've also received a few new images for my wildlife competition which you can see at the bottom of this column and these will be added to my website very shortly.