Elkhound Montage

24 x 18, colour pencil and pencil

After giving both dogs something to sit on - in this case grass - and doing my usual 'touch ups' here and there I am now calling the Elkhound montage finished. After a difficult start and taking a lot longer to complete than I had originally planned I am really happy with how this portrait turned out.

It is now the one and only portrait sitting in my new 'Montage Gallery' on my website. I have wanted to do a montage for a long time now and to offer them as a choice on my website but, as is always the case, I could never find the time.

I don't know about other artists reading this blog but if I sit down and do a bit of art 'for me' and have commissions sitting there with deadlines to meet I feel guilty and would blame that piece if I didn't finish a commission in time. What if a commission takes longer than I first thought?, what about the knock on effect for other commissions? Yes, I probably think too much but it does worry me which is a relatively new thing as I haven't always felt like this - it's a shame as I always said I would put aside time for my own work. That said, I have had a busy year which is great and as my husband always kindly points out, I don't have to sit and watch every soap going on the TV!

My Montage Gallery is in the early stages but I plan to add more to this over the coming months. I'm still slowly working on the Springer Spaniel montage, which I hope to have finished soon, and I want to do one of our dog, Zara, at some point. Hopefully having this choice in my galleries will encourage someone to go for that something a bit more special and have their own pet montage.