Hellooooooo

Eric
10x8 Colour Pencil

What a month, and none of it pleasant. Fingers crossed, touch wood, etc, my headaches appear to be clearing thanks to a course of antibiotics, and I'm starting to feel and look human again.

I've never realised quite how debilitating headaches can be - I was totally useless and could often only manage one or two hours a day on my commissions. Needless to say I have a mountain of things to get through - emails, assessments, commissions, paper work, not to mention Christmas shopping.

I'd like to say this has all been done but unfortunately it hasn't and I HATE the shops at this time of year. I'll need to get my finger out soon as my daughter is starting to wonder whether she'll get anything under the tree this year. Then there's the wrapping (groan). Why does the run up to Christmas invariably turn out to be major stressful? It's enough to give anyone tension headaches and those I could well do without, thank you.

Another Cocker Spaniel

I don't know if it's the weather, something in the air or the stress that comes with the run up to Christmas but I've not been feeling myself these past two weeks - all headachy. Feeling like this does not help when you have to do close, detailed drawings so let's just say not enough's been getting done.

Something I did manage to finish despite all my suffering and pain was this beautiful Cocker Spaniel with very curly ears - my favourite.

A WIP - Part 2

Back again with more of an update really on how my 'experiment' on Ampersand Pastelbord is coming along.

Have now finished the neck area and I am calling it done - minus the whiskers and, of course, the inevitable touch-ups I feel need doing after living with it for a while. BUT as you will no doubt notice, it is still without a background.

I have never been happy doing backgrounds for head studies - you can see this in my work - preferring to leave the white of the paper. Do they really need one? I'm not totally averse to them and will add one if requested to when doing a commission or if I feel it would benefit from having one - if I need to make a lot of white hair or whiskers stand out for example. Having said all this I do want to incorporate backgrounds more into my own work in the future and need to work on this.

If not done correctly a background can be overpowering, not harmonize with the subject or even worse, the subject could end up looking as if it has been stuck on. For these reasons alone I should have worked on the background while I was doing the dog and not left it to last - naughty I know and would probably get a slap on the wrist from many an artist for doing so. I was thinking about it all the way through, honest.

I just hope that whatever I choose to do for this drawing works otherwise I will have wasted 16+ hours working on the dog - another good reason for doing the background first or at the same time.