Golden Retriever update

Gypsy
Copyright Laura Hardie 2009

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My lack of posts lately will tell you that I’m still not finding the time I’d like just now to work on the Retrievers but I have been picking up my pencils whenever I can - one of the big advantages of working with coloured pencils. Gypsy is now finished, or at least she is for now as I may well tweak bits here and there at the end.

Before I start a portrait I like to sit down with my reference photo, colour charts and pencils to pick out what I call my ‘basic palette’. This is quite simply the colours that I see in the fur and think would work. I always end up adding to this with more pencils as I work on the portrait and can easily end up with triple the amount I started out with. As a few people have asked me what colours I have used for Gypsy I thought I would show you the chart I have sitting on my drawing board next to my portrait (tidied up especially for my blog as it’s not normally so neat). This shows the colours I chose at the beginning and had next to me when I began the portrait. You should be able to click on the image to see it more clearly.

As I said earlier, I always end up adding pencils as I work my way through the portrait and it was no different with Gypsy. Other pencils I used were Putty Beige (Prismacolor); Bistre Bistre and Terracotta (FC Polychromos); Bistre, Taupe, Bronze, Ivory, Golden Brown, Vandyke Brown (Derwent Artist); French Grey 10% and 30% (Luminance). A limited palette really when I consider the amount of pencils I can sometimes end up with.