An old watercolour

This is a watercolour I did of a local farm in my early days. The owner of the farm asked a number of times to buy it. I finally gave in just before christmas so it has now gone to a new home.

Latest work

 These are my two latest pictures. The horse is on Ingress paper and is 7" x 10" and is a mix of pastel pencils and soft pastels.

The Snow Leopard is on Mi-Teintes paper and is 7" x 5" pastel pencils have been used for the Leopard and a soft pastel has been used to block in the background. This is a paper you either love or hate and I am closer to hating it than loving it. I will try to find something to use it up on and not buy any more. Because I am not happy with the look of this one it is doubtful it will go up for sale.

What I use

Just incase anybody`s interested I thought I would pos the type of pastels I use. I have Ashby soft pastels, Derwent pastel pencils, Faber Castell Pitt pastel pencils and Conte Crayons (a very hard pastel). I buy most of my supplies from the SAA. For landscapes I use mainly the Ashby with the pastel pencils for detail, for portraits I use mainly the pastel pencils with the soft pastles for the background if needed. The Conte Crayons I use for sketching and when I need a sharp line over the other pastels.

Facebook !!!

With a view to getting more portrait work I made a facebook page but it will not let me put my web address up. It will let me put the address for this blog so if you have come from my facebook page click the link on here to get to my web page.

A return to art

I have not done any art for a few months due to other commitments but have finally found some time to do some. The piece I am working on at the moment is a Snow Leopard and I have four reference photos of landscapes ready. So I am going to be starting the new year covered in pastel dust and hope to stay that way all year. I plan to start pushing the portrait work and see if I can get enough commissions to keep me going.

Reference photos and pricing

Not posted for a while so thought I had better put fingers to keys. Have been a bit under the weather for the past few weeks so have not got a lot done. Did manage to get out and take a few reference photos and have just started work on a horse picture.
On the forums there tends to be a lot of posts about pricing. This is always the hardest part when you come to sell your art. You need to find a balance between what people will pay and what you will work for. New artists tend to under price by a vast amount, for example a recent one I saw an artist asked if £20 was too much for a work they had spent over 15 hours on, taking into account materials they would be working for about £1 an hour. Then you get the ones that only want to make back the cost of materials because its just an hobby. Now I don`t mind if people want to work for £1 an hour but it does have a knock on effect in that it de-values all art. I try to price my work as fairly as possible taking into account the time it takes me to do a piece and the cost of materials. My commission work prices are based on that as for my other work if it is in a gallery they take up to 50% commission so my prices have to take that into account as they would be upset if a customer said `I can get that at half the price on the net`. So I hope this helps people understand a bit more about pricing.

 The person this portrait was for has now got it so I can post it at last. This was taken from a photo taken at a wedding and this person is only one of the people in the photo. Also the print is only 6" x 4" so the actual face was quite small. I scanned the face at high resolution and then re-sized to a workable reference size. The problem with working like this is that there is very little detail in the photo so unless you know the person or pet it is hard to get a good likeness. Sometimes it is better to tell a client that the photo just is not good enough to work from rather than produce a painting they are not happy with.

This is the landscape I finally got round to doing. It is South Stack Lighthouse on Anglesey. I have been intending to do this for some time now, it is 10" x 7" on Ingress paper. There is no sky line in this because without having a boat the only way to get this view is to stand on the cliffs across from it which are higher so you are looking down.
Thats all for now will post again soon.

11/02/11

Compleated the portrait the wife wanted me to do but I`m not going to post it just yet as the person she wants to give it to may see it.
Now I`m at that point again of what to do next. This is what I find hardest, with a commission the client is deciding what you do, when its something I`m picking my self I can`t decide what to do. I would like to do a landscape or two next, get away from people and animals for a week or two unless a job comes in.
Have looked through all my landscape photos but nothing grabs me and the weather is a bit too bad to go out taking more, will have another look later and see what I can find.

Leopard4

Carried on with this last night and got it finished. Time now to start planing what I`m going to do next, my wife wants me to do a portrait of a friend that died a number of years ago but I also need to do something to put on the web site for sale as there is very little on there at the moment.

Leopard3

Finally found some time to work on this. Got most of the colour in now. Finding it hard working on this velour paper, after the Tiger I said I wouldn`t use it again but everybody liked the tiger so much I decided to try this Leopard on it. For some reason I just can`t seem to get any detail on this paper, maybe its just not for me. I`m just going to do a little bit more on this and then call it finished, I will go back to Ingress paper for now.

Leopard 2

Finally got some time to work on the Leopard. I have now done the first layer of the spots and nose. This now helps define the picture. The next thing I have to do is get the main fur colour in and the eye. I think I will be seeing spots before my eyes before I finish this.
Will update again when I have got more done, hopefully in a day or two.

Leopard 1

I have now started on the Leopard. This is going to be on green velour paper with the picture area 10" x 7". On the right is the first stage where I have done the outline in white. I will keep posting this as I do the different stages to show the way I work. I am going to take my time with this as I have other commitments at the moment so there could be a few days between each post. If you wish to leave comments please do so as everybody has different views.

Portrait finished

Finally finished the portrait of my friend. Pastels 7" x 10" on Ingress paper. Had trouble with the hand as its the first time I`ve included a hand in a portrait. The picture this is from was taken when he took a break from landscaping his garden hence the dirty fingers.
Will be starting my next piece over the next few days. It is going to be a Leopard but I am not sure yet if I should give the velour paper another try or stick with Ingress paper.

Jan 3rd

About half way through the portrait now. Working on ingress paper and things are going well.

My latest work is this tiger in pastel on valour paper 10" x 7". This was my first time useing valour paper and found it quite hard to work on. At first I was not happy with the finished picture but it seems to be growing on me. Even so I think it will be a while before I try this paper again.
Took me a few days to decided what to do next then I found a picture of a friend I took many years ago. Will be seeing them shortly for the first time in over 2 years so I have started a portrait from the picture as a supprise for them. Will post it on here when I finish it.