Sox #2 :)

This is the second drawing of Sox I've done, and I like this picture MUCH better. The portrait too, but even just the picture. I only drew that last picture because it was my Granny's favorite, but personally this is a much better picture, turned out better, and I just like it :) This is a front shot, where you can see her face and she's not staring at some random object not drawn. She's relaxed, her mouth is open and happy, and you can see her better. So I like this portrait better :)

 The photograph I took of this drawing has some graphite shine in the body, so it looks darker than this picture does. Because Sox was black, I had trouble getting the shadows in the face dark enough and I finally had to draw some of the hair in charcoal to get it dark enough. For some reason it doesn't look like Sox though. I think it's a good drawing, it just doesn't look like Sox and I can't figure out why. But it's still a good drawing and Granny will know who it is, so I'm pretty happy with it :)

My Briarlight :(

I've known for a while that my Briar has a problem with his rear left leg. Sometimes when he walks, he'll curl it up underneath him and only use 3 legs for a couple steps, and then he'll go back to using all 4. I took him to my vet a while back and I was told he has a subluxating patella. Meaning, the tendons in his knee are stretched and can't hold his kneecap in place well any more. Whenever his kneecap pops out of place, he'll keep it bent and use 3 legs and the vet showed me how to gently straighten out his leg to pop it back into place. The vet also told me he'll need surgery at some point and he referred me to a specialist.
The specialist agreed that he would need surgery at some point, but gave me anti-inflammatories to give him for the sprain. And he got better for a while. I knew it still hurt him, but he used it, and it was always in the back of my mind.
Well, then when I went to Kanab, UT for an internship at Best Friends Animal Sanctuary, he got sick. He was throwing up and having diarrhea. Three vet trips, a blood test, an x-ray, and $600 later, I was told he had a sensitive stomach and to change him food :P I was not happy. I mean, I was happy it was such an easy problem to fix and not something life-threatening, but all the time and money and worrying it took me to find out he has a sensitive stomach did not make me happy.
But that's over and done with. What I want to mention is the x-ray they took. He's such a small little guy that an x-ray of his stomach was pretty much a full-body x-ray, and I got a good glimpse at the bones in his bad knee. I knew he'd have arthritis, I didn't realize it had gotten so bad so quickly! The top of his femur is calloused and deformed due to arthritis :(
Then a few nights ago, he started whining and crying for no apparent reason, but he'd yelp any time we even went near his leg. I gave him the very last rimadyl, left over from his sprain, and put a hot pad on his knee and he quieted down. And I took him back to the specialist the next day.
Well, long story short, he's now scheduled for surgery next Monday :( Luckily, I have quite a few more 'likes' on Facebook, over 100 now! And I put out a plea to all of my fans, I need more commissions to raise money for my Briarlight's surgery! It's going to cost roughly $1200, and that's $1200 that I don't have :/
But I do have some things working for me. Number one, Christmas is coming up so hopefully I'll get a big Christmas rush and do a bunch of portraits. Also, this Saturday is another big craft fair at the Nevada Humane Society and of course, I signed up for a table. Briar's always with me when I do these and this time, I'm going to wrap his leg so people can see he's injured and have a 'Briar donation' jar. In between that and the portraits I'm hoping to accumulate at the fair, hopefully I'll have enough for his surgery. After that, I'll have to come up with this month's rent XP

Tinman and Bella :)

It took me a while to get to these portraits, but I finally got them both done. This is Bella on the right and Tinman on the left. They belong to the 'usual crowd' at my favorite dog park in Las Vegas. Of course, I'm in Reno now but I go to Vegas all the time to visit my family and I always take my Briar to this really nice dog park on Warm Springs. And there's a 'usual crowd' made up of a few people and their dogs. They come about the same time every morning and they all commandeer a picnic table and hang out together. And I join them when I can :) When I mentioned I draw pet portraits and showed them a few of my works, of course they wanted their own! (All of them dote on their dogs, it makes me so happy to see :) They said no hurry, so I put them on the back burner for a while. But now they're done!!

This is Tinman! I had a really hard time trying to get his muzzle right. The way his mouth looks in the picture, his lips kinda curl up into a smile, but when I tried to draw it like that, it just looked photoshopped and ridiculous. It took me a while to be satisfied with it, and I'm still not very happy. Also his eyes. His left eye bulges out just right (he is a Chihuahua after all), but his right eye looks kinda flat and the contrast makes the portrait look funny. Not my best work, but he's done :)

And this is Bella. She's a sweetheart Jack Russell Terrier who loves to cuddle and give kisses. I like her eyes, I worked really hard to make them realistic and I think I did a pretty good job. But I was not satisfied with her left ear. The shadow under her ear is so dark it pops out, it's like the focal point instead of her white fur, and I did everything I could to make it fade into the background instead.
I look at my past works and they're beautiful and then I look at my recent works and I'm not happy with them :/ I must be out of practice. I'll have to fix that!

Ashlee and Sox, RIP TT_TT

I have some very sad news, my granny's dog Sox had to be put down last week. Since I was already commissioned by a family friend Jan to draw Sox and her cat Ashlee, but hadn't started, I got started right away and gave the picture of Sox to my granny as a present from me and Jan both (although I didn't charge Jan for it, how could I have?) So I drew Ashlee and Sox.
Sox was a big sweetheart. And when I say big, I mean BIG. She was a black lab/great dane mix and she weighed more than I do. She was probably longer than I am tall too, lol. She was 12 or 13, which for a great dane mix, is pretty old. She did nothing but laze around, plop herself down in the middle of the action for the attention, and beg relentlessly at dinner time. And we loved her to death :) She also had a very intimidating bark and though my granny had been broken into twice, that never happened again after Sox came to live with her. She was a giant who would take up all of the couch but leave Granny a small corner to squeeze into, and her part of the couch was distinctly marked with a pound or two of black fur, which never seemed to go away no matter how much laundry and vacuuming we did. She was always excited to go to the park and get her dinner, to the point where even as arthritic as she was, she'd jump up and down ecstatically, but never once did she jump onto or hurt frail Granny. She was a big lovebug and she will be dearly missed. I drew Granny's favorite picture of her in remembrance.

Honestly, I'm not sure I like this one. I think I did a pretty good job, it looks just like her from the white on her muzzle to the spiky fur on the back of her legs. But her eyes look horrible, and in my opinion that's the most important part. If you can't capture the expression of their face, and dogs smile with their tail and in their eyes, it doesn't matter how good the rest of the picture is, the picture's lifeless. The eyes aren't just expressionless, they don't even look like eyes. They look like buttons that you would sew onto a doll in place of eyes. But I am, after all, my own worst critic and Granny loves it, so I'm happy :)
I hate Ashlee even more, for the same exact reason. Her eyes have life and expression to them, but they're misshapen and weird, and for that reason the entire picture sucks. I really need to keep working on this, I'm out of practice :(

Alice's daughter

This is my latest work in progress, as I currently have no commissions. Alice is a Facebook friend of mine in the UK and she's a photographer. I love her work, all of her pictures are so soft looking, and I wanted to see if I could imitate it. So I asked if I could steal one of her pictures, she said sure, and I chose this one. Which just so happened to be her daughter. Since this wasn't commission, just for my own experimentation, I did it in my sketch book instead of my nice commission paper. And I haven't quite finished yet, but I am SO happy with how it's turning out! The eyes especially! Eyes are really hard, they have so much texture and depth and expression it's really hard to capture in a drawing. But I worked on these eyes over and over and over, adding color and taking it off, forever. Until I finally got the texture I wanted. These are by far the best eyes I've ever drawn and that's the only reason why I'm blogging about an unfinished picture, I am just so proud of the work I did on these eyes! And I love how soft and perfect her baby hand and her tiny lips are. I think I captured the softness of the photograph pretty well too and the shading looks just perfect. But then she has longer hair too, so that's going to be a challenge when I get to it.What do you think? :D

A bit of history... :)

This was my very first drawing (thus the grid) and it has a bit of history attached. I've been drawing cartoons and manga since before I can remember, and when I tried drawing a picture of me and my siblings in 9th grade we all ended up looking like Bigfoot. So I decided to stick with manga ^^;

My very first dog changed all that. A few months after I adopted my beloved Briar (7 years later), I decided to try and draw him and this was the result. I decided it turned out pretty good, so I drew another one.

I was in college at UNR at the time, and brought my sketch book with me to draw in between classes. Well, a friend saw my second drawing and asked me to draw her horses. And then more friends asked me to draw their pets and before I knew it, I was in business! My beloved Briar changed my life and started my portrait business :)

My very first (real) drawing :) Briar in graphite

My second drawing, Briar in graphite with a carbon pencil to deepen the shadows. This is the drawing that started everything!

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