Friday, March 27, 2009

Prints and a new coloured pencil portrait

Something I have wanted to do for what seems like forever now is to turn my artwork into prints so I thought I would spend time this week working towards finally completing this goal. It certainly feels like it has been one long journey getting to the stage I'm at, believe it or not, with there always being something or other to sort out – anything from problems calibrating my computer to simply finding space to house my (huge) printer. I’ve been scanning, sizing, photoshoping and tweaking these past few days to get things set up and ready for the printing stage. Tomorrow I’ll spend the day printing proofs and making sure everything looks good – like the colours, image size, etc. At last I feel I’m getting somewhere.

My pencils haven’t been forgotten in all the excitement over my prints and I have been picking them up now and again to work on a portrait I started a while back. The subject for this drawing is very dear to me as she was our dog and, although no longer living with us, I still love her to bits. She was the model for this portrait, which reminds me – I originally wanted to make this into a print too.

Here are a couple of ‘in progress’ shots.

11 comments:

Grahame Butler said...

Great work Laura, Iv'e just found a few photo's of my old boxer, which I hope to draw in the next week or so, I intended to draw him graphite but seeing your work I'm tempted to get the coloured pencils out again.

Jennifer Rose said...

good luck with the prints. once all the work of getting colours to match, it still is cheaper (most of the time :p) to print your own. Your boxer is looking great, looks so soft and the lighting is wonderful :)

Laura said...

Thank you Grahame:) I adore boxers and just LOVE their faces so will look forward to following the progress of your drawing on your blog.

Hi Jennifer - I didn't realise how much work is actually involved in getting everything set up and it didn't help when things kept going wrong. Hopefully it will all be worth it:)

elf said...

Oh! Boxers hold a special place in my heart. She's beautiful! I love following you blog, you do amazing work.

Pat

"JeanneG" said...

I love all your dog portraits. I was wondering what colors of colored pencils you use for your black dogs. They are wonderful. My favorites are the Golden Retrievers and the one dog that may be a Great Dane on one of your earlier pages.

Laura said...

Hi Pat, thank you for stopping by my blog:)

In answer to your question I would have to say it would depend on the dog I was drawing. Some black dogs have red/brown tones throughout whereas with others it might be the cooler shades of blue and purples.

The last black dog I drew was Raven (you can see him on my blog as a work in progress)and with him I used a lot of greys - as I said it depends on the dog and the colours I see:)

The colours I used were:
Sepia 10% (Luminance)
Cold Grey III and IV
Warm Grey III, IV, V and VI
Paynes Grey
Dark Sepia
Dark Indigo
Walnut Brown
Black (FC)
Burnt Sienna (Caran D'Ache)
Steel Grey
Mid Grey
Petrel Grey (Coloursoft)

Hope this helps:)

Unknown said...

Your work is so detailed. I am in awe. It's so realistic. Oh if only I could draw like you.

Laura said...

Thank you Dors, you're too kind:)

"JeanneG" said...

Thanks Laura. I have a problem with not being able to "see" the different colors in a face. I do better with dogs but the black is harder for me. Now people's faces...that's another sad story.

Grahame Butler said...

Hi Laura. can you tell me what colours you used for this boxer?

Laura said...

No problem (I think) - normally I take a note of the colours I use for each portrait but as this is still a work in progress I haven't got to that stage yet and have been dipping into the colours set aside to finish it to work on my chocolate lab:)

The colours I've used are....

Caran D'Ache Luminance:
Brown Ochre 10% and 50%
Brown Ochre
Burnt Sienna 10%
Sepia 10%
Burnt Ochre
Steel Grey

Polychromos FC:
Brown Ochre
Bistre Bistre
Venetian Red
Walnut Brown
Black

Caran D'Ache Pablo:
Hazel
Brown Ochre
Vandyke Brown
Umber

Derwent Artist:
Brown Ochre
Golden Brown
Raw Umber
Bistre
Storm Grey
Ash Blue
Gunmetal
Mars Black

Prismacolor:
Light Umber
French Grey 10%

Derwent Coloursoft:
Mid Grey

As you can see a lot of Brown Ochres:)