Carol and Bernie

I found out my stepmom had to put her schnauzer down in November, so I decided to draw a picture of him for her for Christmas. I asked my dad for a picture and this is the one he send. It was taken qiute literally before Bernie was put down. Bernie was wearing a doctor's wristband and you could see the vet office in the backround. I can only assume Carol is crying into poor Bernie's fur. But also Bernie knew there was something up. He was at the vet, Carol was crying, and Dad was shoving a camera in his poor little face and in the original picture, Bernie was licking his lips nervously (they do that sometimes, it's called a calming signal). Of course my dad having a sense of humor, that's why he chose this picture, but I had to edit out Bernie's tongue. I couldn't stand drawing it when I knew it was a signal to those around him that he was uncomfortable. (Also, I thought it ruined the picture).

So this was a tough one. I had to make up details in Bernie's muzzle because I could only see half of it, I had to edit out the wristband (which meant more making up details), Bernie had long fur which is a bitch to draw, and then Carol had long curly hair too! Also there's that big spot in between Bernie and Carol's shoulder where everything is so dark you can't tell which is which. Which I guess isn't too hard to draw, it's just a big black mass, but I don't like doing that because I like everything to be detailed. And Bernie's eyes and right ear are much darker than the rest of the picture, I don't like that either :/ But all in all, considering how difficult a portrait this was, I think it turned out great. Carol says every time she looks at it she starts crying (which was NOT my intention! :P ) but she likes it and I'm glad :)

Carol and Bernie in graphite

Spokes

This one was another Christmas present and I just barely finished it in time! I was drawing like crazy, not just on this one but also Carol and Bernie, and Oreo. These portraits make great Christmas presents, but I have to be careful not to overload myself next year. I just barely managed to finish everything in time for Christmas.

So anyway, this is Spokes. Spokes is yet another dog waiting by Rainbow Bridge for the rest of his family to join him and Jennifer and the rest of their family miss him very much. Jennifer asked me to draw his ball too, because that's how much he loved it. In the picture she sent me, he's standing in the snow with his ball in front of him as if to say 'One more throw Mom, it's not that cold!' And despite how drawing spheres is a beginner's first lesson, I've actually never drawn one before! It was kinda interesting :) Spokes himself was easy. Being black, I didn't have to worry so much about texture. I made his edges furry to suggest the texture, but as for the rest, it was just black. The problem I had though was I had to use white as a border between dark places, like his head and back, and his face and chest. I think it turned out ok, but the light places are all weird. The light source was the top right, so the top of his head and back were supposed to be lighter and the shadow goes on the bottom left. But then under his chin is light too because I had to differentiate between his face/chin and his body! I didn't like his paws either, they didn't seem grounded and I realized why after I took this picture - his legs have shadows but his paws don't! So I put some shadows in around his feet and it looked much better after that. Unfortunately, I mailed it off before I could take a picture of the changes, so this is the only picture I have. But it doesn't look too bad:)

Spokes in graphite

Oreo

My latest picture is a cat named Oreo. I'm not sure if there's a Rainbow Bridge for cats, but if there was he'd be there. Probably sunbathing in a tree where the dogs can't bother him :) You can't tell from the drawing, but Oreo only had 3 legs. A lady named Marty asked me to draw her Oreo as a Christmas present for her husband. They both loved him very much :)

Oreo was the first cat I've drawn and I was a little nervous about it, but figured it couldn't be much different than drawing a dog or a horse. The only problem with Oreo is that he was black and white. Which isn't a problem for a cat, but makes drawing him difficult. It's hard to show the texture of the fur when the fur is really dark and it's near impossible to show any texture at all when what you're drawing is pure white. How do you depict texture without using color and turning it gray? Well, the answer I found is to leave the white white and use what's around the white to depict the texture. So the borders between the white and the black are fur-like and that suggests the rest has that texture as well. And where his white fur met the white backround, and for the shadows on his white fur, I had to make small, VERY light strokes to suggest fur. Being self-taught, I'm not sure this is the right way to go about drawing white fur, but I think it turned out nice :)

The other problem was the V on Oreo's back. I really hate drawing long fur/hair, it's a big pain in the butt. But that's probably just because I don't have much experience or practice with it yet. I like to hope it'll get easier, lol. So first I mapped out the major white areas and the major black areas. Then I kinda made the borders less obvious by mapping out some black strands in the white fur and white strands in the black fur. Once I had everything mapped out, I shaded it in and then blurred the borders even more by making strands in the white fur of different widths and various shades of gray. I also erased small hairs in the black fur, but mostly I just added black to the white. I mapped on the side of caution - it's easier to add black than to erase it! Also a side note, I used the same technique for the inside of his ears and I mapped out his white whiskers before I shaded so I could draw around them.

So all in all, I really like how this one turned out. It actually didn't take all that long for all that I was worrying about it. I would've liked to use some artistic license to take out the bump above his head and the bump behind his neck, but I drew it as I saw it *shrug*

Oreo, in graphite

A closeup of Oreo's face. The photos never seem to capture the little details that make the drawings so realistic (hey, I'm an artist, not a photographer!), so I decided to take a closeup picture

Three Dachshunds

Here's my latest picture, the three dachshunds Trish commissioned me to draw for her neighbors for Christmas. I only got Tilly's name, she's the long-haired dachshund on the right. This picture took a loong time! The did the middle dachshund first. I love how the eyes turned out in this drawing! My first really good, realistic eyes :) I did the left dachshund second. These first two were in the same picture, sitting on a couch. Tilly was in a separate picture, which was horrible. Trish was having a hard time getting a picture of her, she's a puppy and pretty much refuses to sit still. The only picture I got was really out of focus, so I had to do some research and make up the little details. I think the long hair and ears turned out really well! Long hair is hard and I don't have much experience with it. But practice makes perfect, right? :D

Home 4 the Holidays

Today was Home 4 the Holidays, the craft fair at the Nevada Humane Society. And we had a great time! I forgot my business cards ^^; but it was a blessing in disguise. I've been suspicious that every time I give away a card, it ends up in the trash. I haven't had ONE person call or email me from my cards - it's all from the information I've gathered. So not having any cards was a blessing in disguise because every time someone asked for one, I'd tell them they were out and they would write their information down instead. So now instead of them finding my card a week later and tossing it, I can bug them until they email me a picture to draw :D I got twice as many names and email addresses today than I did at the Dogtoberfest. I just spent almost an hour emailing all these people back! Hopefully I'll get some responses :)

Dogtoberfest :)

So the Dogtoberfest was today and we did great! We had KTVN News 2, KRNV News 4, KOLO News 8, Alice 96.5, and Sunny 106.9 all there advertising the excitement and we got a ton of people coming to check us out! (Hopefully the news clips will be online in the next few days and then I'll upload them) The Canine Rehabilitation Center and Sanctuary got a ton of donations (still to be counted) and several families interested in some of their dogs, hopefully soon-to-be-adopted dogs. But most of all it was a lot of fun for everyone involved! There were several businesses/companies/organizations there advertising their respective businesses/companies/organizations, all while supporting CRCS. A few of them were organizations dedicated to rescuing dogs that were completely separate from CRCS. Boxers and Buddies and Nevada Greyhounds Unlimited were both there, organizations that rescue their respective breeds and adopt them out. And of course there were a ton of dogs and even more people - it was crowded!!

Briar and Breeze sure had fun! They were my main means of attracting customers, lol. People would see Breeze immediately, go over to pet her, see Briar and pet him, and then look at my stuff and sometimes take a card. Breeze loves everyone, but I had to keep an eye on Briar. Every once in a while, he'd try to scare off a customer or two. My own dog trying to scare off my customers! :O (Kinda funny how Briar was always lovable and Breeze came to us with some behavioral issues, and now she's the sweeter of the two. Chris had a field day with that information). By the time we were done 5 hours after arriving, they were both exhausted. It must be a lot of work sitting there, being so cute, and being doted on by so many people!

But anyway, I handed out a couple dozen business cards (new ones specifically for my portraits - I had them made this week!) and got a few peoples' names and emails who were especially interested. So hopefully I should be getting a few commissions soon! :D

My booth at the Dogtoberfest. I know it looks like I'm scowling, I'm really trying not to go blind. The sun was in my eyes the entire event and both me and Chris got really sunburnt!

Dogtober Fest!

Started a new drawing. Blondie was my last commission :( so now I can draw whatever I want :) I promised my best friend Chris I'd draw him and his dog Breeze, so that's what I'm working on at the moment. I'm already pretty far, I have the picture completely mapped out and I'm starting to shade him in (and he looks scary!! He only has one eye and half his teeth because the rest are in the shadows and as an outline, he looks like a bad Halloween costume. But he'll look better when I'm done of course.)

I recently made a new friend, Kristin Ivey, founder of the Canine Rehabilitation Center and Sanctuary. She takes the humane society one step further - she adopts NHS dogs and other dogs in need and fosters them out to people great patience, like me (I'm currently fostering one of her dogs, for more information, see my new blog) and she matches them up with the perfect forever home. I got in touch with her in order to help dogs who need help... and unexpectedly found another outlet for my portraits! The Dogtober Fest on Saturday the 13th is going to be an event even bigger than the Doggie Palooza with infinitely more advertising than Wildflower Village. It's being hosted by the Legends outlet mall, Alice 96.5, Sunny 106.9, and a bunch of other businesses, including me. A booth cost $100. I was wary of paying it at first because my other shows have been a bust and I'm not sure how many customers I'm going to get, but I had a little extra money and this event is much more public and even if I don't get any customers, my $100 went to a good cause. So with that decision made and the money already taken out already, now I'm looking forward to the party! Music, food, dogs, face paining.... what's not to like?! o(≧∇≦)o

Chris and Breeze. Chris looks pretty scary, huh?

Blondie

Blondie in graphite

Got a little more practice with negative space drawing with this one. I started off with Blondie, my aunt and uncle's doe. If you look at his left ear and his muzzle, you can see this white whiskers, drawn (for lack of a better word) with negative space. I did the same thing with the rocks, the shadows are colored in and the top, light part of the rocks have little color, but more detail. I don't like how the rocks turned out. I think they're decent considering it was my first attempt drawing rough rocks up close, but I don't think they're up to my self-imposed near-perfect standards. But I am most definitely my own worst critic, so maybe the look fine and I just can't see it objectively. In my opinion, the negative space backfired. The shadows are too dark ad the li is too light and the result is you tend to focus more on the shadows than the surface part of the rocks, where the surface part is supposed to jump out at you. I think par of the this is Blondie is to light so it diminishes the effect of the light surface and makes the too-dark shadows pop. I also think the trees in the background look strange, but its in the background so it works. I had trouble with the sky again, getting it perfectly shaded and perfectly blended, but luckily there weren't any clouds to 'undraw'. Although, come to think of it, that's negative space drawing too. Learning new techniques all the time :)

Dexter

Dexter in graphite

This picture was fun! First I drew Dexter, my aunt's sister's puppy who left for Rainbow Bridge far too young (that's why she had me do a portrait of him, because his family missed him so much). After I was done with Dexter, I mapped out the main stalks of grass, left them white, and shaded in around them. This is called negative space drawing and this was my first experience with it. So the main stalks were white and the rest was black. Then I used my eraser to make more, smaler stalks there gray and looked farther away. I had fun with the grass and even though I don't think it's quite detailed enough to look very realistic, I think it turned out really well.

Rose

Rose on the beach in graphite

This picture took a looong time, I started working on this one in March! Drawing Rose was relatively easy, though I'm not perfectly happy with the way she turned out. Her head is small compared to her body and her face looks human, but it doesn't look like Rose :/ But drawing her was pretty easy; it was the background that took forever.
First I had to experiment with textures to make the sand look like sand. Then I had to experiment with lighting on the rocks. The water was pretty easy (it's just water up close that's hard!) And then the sky. Gah, the sky! First of all, it's hard to color the sky itself, making it the exact same shade all the way across and making the darker top fade in gradually, all the way across. And then there's the texture. Of course sky doesn't have a texture, but that's exactly why it's so hard. You can get different textures depending on what material you blend the pencil with (for example, I used a rough felt to get the rough, random texture of the same and chamois for the smooth leather of the horses' saddles) but I had to find a very soft material for the sky and it had to be blended well enough that you couldn't see ay pencil strokes. I finally decided on a tissue, but it took a long time because the tissue was too soft and ripped before I had used it much. I used a lot of tissues.
And then the clouds. I kinda cheated on the clouds. After I had completely colored in the sky I took an eraser and erased in random horizontal strokes to get the flat clouds on the horizon. I didn't even try to practice the puffy clouds we usually see. It was going to take more practice that I had time for. I'm going to have to practice that a lot before I get it good enough to put in a portrait.
And then finally, I took my mechanical pencil (I love my mechanical pencils, they're always so sharp!) and painstakingly outlined and colored in the palm trees. Then at last, AT LAST! I was done. There is no doubt in my mind this portrait to the longest. Not even Emmett took this long! Also the background took more time (nd turned out better I think!) than Rose herself. Despite the few flaws I mentioned earlier, I think it turned out well and I'm relatively happy with it :)

Wildflower Village Show

Today was a very interesting day. Me and my friend and roommate Chris did a show at Wildflower Village and we had a whole room to ourselves! (Well, I had a room to myself; Chris was just there to keep me company) I put on music, put out cookies, put my jewelry on display, and sat down to work on Rose. We got almost no visitors, it was cold and rainy and actually started hailing a few times. We had to leave the door open so people would know we were showcasing and not pass us by, AND the old heater didn't work! Lucky for me and Chris, the room we were in used to be a kitchen and the ancient oven still worked. So we turned the over on with the door open and before long our room was pretty cozy. And just about everyone that came in stayed for a while to get warm and despite not getting any commissions, w had a lot of fun hanging out and chatting with people all day. We also met a new friend, Doug, who was displaying his photography in the room next to us. He spent a lot of times hanging out with us because his room was so cold. So we made friends and like each other's page on Facebook. No customers, but I got some drawing done and we all had fun :)
Click here to check out Doug's work

Sammy

Sammy in graphite

Well, I passed out a bunch of cards at the Doggie Palooza but no customers and no call-backs. But dozens of dogs got adopted and I finished another portrait. Introducing Sammy, a black lab that was dearly loved by my grandpa and his wife until she passed on to Rainbow Bridge, where she patiently waits for her owners to join her so they can pass on to heaven together (although poor Sammy will have to be patient a little longer because my grandpa and Linda aren't leaving us for a while) I started and finished Sammy's portrait at the Doggie Palooza, time well spent. Sammy was relatively easy to draw, especially after drawing Emmett! This on didn't have a background for starters, and because Emmett was wet, the texturtook longer. kSammy was much simpler. The news even got footage of me drawing! Although I couldn't imbed the video in this blog :( But it was cool :)

Doggie Palooza

So the humane society is having an adoption event called the Doggie Palooza and there's gonna be a whole bunch of booths o!f businesses promoting dog-related stuff. And I got a booth!! Me and my pet portraits are gonna be at the Nevada Humane Society on the 10th promoting dog adoptions and hopefully getting commissions - a win-win situation even if I don't get any customers. And there will even be news coverage! So excited!

Bailey

I finished the last of my bus friends' pictures, a golden retriever named Bailey. Honestly, the picture I got was bad. It was dark in the room with the camera flash on, so her face and head were really light and everything else was really dark. You couldn't make out any of her back half, so I just did her head, chest, and part of her back. The picture was also really blurry, so I had to make out what I could and then look at other pictures of golden retrievers for reference of details (exactly what the eyes look like, what direction the fur grows, etc). What made it even worse was that I've never drawn long fur before and without being able to see the details of the picture, this drawing started with LOTS of research into how to draw long fur! But I think it turned out good and Sue was happy with it :)

Sue's dog Bailey, done in graphite

Maybe.....?! :D

I went to another art gallery today to ask about selling my stuff. And long story short, I meeting with the owner tomorrow at noon to set up a consignment for some of the jewelry! :DDD She also gave me some tips. She said she had chainmaille in her shop before and it didn't sell well, but more original stuff sells quickly, like my wire-wrapped pendents. She also said hearts are starting to sell because of Valentine's day. So I went to Wildflower Village (the store I already have a consignment with, in which my jewelry has been sitting gathering dust) and took a few pieces out, mostly heart-themed. I combined them with the few pieces I still had sitting at home, cleaned all the dust off of them (sigh...), and I'm all set for tomorrow. And I'm excited!! She's already got a spot ready for me :) And it sounds like this gallery gets a lot more business than Wildflower Village, so we'll see how it goes.

When I was at Wildflower Village, the lady there gave me a few ideas on my drawings. Since I currently don't have anything to sell because I've only been doing requests lately, I don't have anything to put up in the gallery. But she said to come back on Thursday and talk to a women named Jackie about possibly setting up an ad drawing portraits of people's pets. 'Cause let's face it, animals are adorable, but I'd much rather buy a picture done specifically of MY pets than a random adorable puppy. She also said I should get in touch with the SPCA or Humane Society about putting some of my pictures up for sell at a fundraiser. That'd be pretty cool :) So now I got lots of ideas and I'm hoping I might actually sell some stuff! I'm pretty excited :)

Emmett

I am pretty pleased with how well this one turned out, considering how much time I put into it, lol. This was my friend's dog Emmett standing in the Truckee river. I thought Emmett would be pretty routine, but I did have a few difficulties. Since Emmett is a black dog, he's (obviously) supposed to be drawn dark. But since he's wet, his fur has a shine to it, and I had a hard time trying to make it seem like shiny but dark fur. Not to mention his fur was in clumps, which I don't think I showed very well. It turned out alright, I guess. BUT! In drawing this picture, I learned the importance of drawing dark things in layers with patience instead of taking your softest pencil and drawing hard. Because that's exactly what I did and almost ruined the picture because you could see every stroke I made. It took some time trying to cover that up and you can still see it pretty well. But the perk of drawing hard in graphite is he's definitely dark and still shiny! I can just attribute the shine to him being wet, lol.

But the reason I'm so proud of this picture is because despite how hard Emmett was, the water in the background was the really hard part! I spent a lot of time and sketch paper trying to get it right before I attempted it behind Emmett and risked having to draw him over again in cased I messed up. I'm still not completely happy with it, but it's very obviously water, which is what matters I guess. At least I got the fading away part instead of looking like he's standing in a wall of water :P
I did Emmett in graphite and the background in charcoal in an attempt to make Emmett more noticeable and the background more, well, backgroundy. But that backfired on me, because then the water turned out darker than Emmett and stood out more, so I had to go back and darken Emmett. I also did the closer water darker and the farther water lighter in an attempt to bring the focus on Emmett's darker head in the middle of a lighter background. But that backfired on me too because Emmett's body was darker than his head, so now the bottom of the picture is too dark and the top is too light and the whole thing looks uneven. But it turned out decently and my friend likes it, and I certainly learned a lot from every screwup on this picture! Every mistake is an opportunity to grow :)

Emmett the black lab standing in water. Emmett was done in graphite and the background in charcoal.

Charra

This was Nita's 2nd horse, Charra. As much as I like horses, after this one I was very happy to start drawing a dog! As least they don't wear saddles :P And the saddle took a long time too, because in the original picture Nita was riding Charra and I edited her out and made up my own details (which I need much more practice at.... it took a lot of time researching different kinds of saddles)
This picture took a while because I couldn't find the motivation to draw. I was pretty tired of horses as this point. But I'm happy the way it turned out. I did mess up on one of the saddle ties, let's see how many people can find it. It stands out to me because I'm my own worst critic, but I'm hoping most people won't notice it, lol. Nita was very happy with both of her pictures and took me horseback riding in thanks. We had a fun day :)  (although I didn't ride either of the horses I drew, lol)

Nita's horse Charra, done in graphite