Summer Breeze

Summer Breeze
Coloured Pencil
24.5cm x 33.5cm

This is a drawing I started a while back and have now added a background to. I am someone who very rarely adds a background to their work, preferring to focus all my attention on the subject, and I want to explore this more. But I don’t know – when I don’t do a background I can feel something’s missing and if I do one I more often than not think it looked better without. Almost like it is taking something away from the subject. There really is no pleasing me sometimes.

Summer Breeze is one of those drawings where I felt a background was needed and when added I had no regrets. As far as backgrounds go it’s simple and uncomplicated but I’m pleased with how it turned out – enough to turn it into prints.

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.