Pet Portraits in Oil

Here is the next stage of Hollie's portrait, where I've begun to dapple the fur on her chest to make it appear soft and fluffy, and I've started to add dabs of that warm orangey colour she has across her face. I won't be adding the fur detail until all of her colours have been painted down because she has many different tones of brown, orange, white, grey etc, and even a little blue in the black areas. I think I should change the background to a black and grey, sligthly stormy sky and landscape, to make her stand out with all her warm colours. This warm background seems too strong at the moment.

We are now at the boatyard where the hull will be inspected - it only took about three hours to get here on Saturday because the weather was really bad and no one else was on the canal really. It rained most of the time and I got soaked because I was driving the boat when it started tipping it down.

In Wheaton Aston a nice couple helped me do the lock because even though I've done locks loads of times before I just couldn't remember how to work them - and we also couldn't find our lock key so we had to buy a new one. Other than that everything went alright. Here is a pic of how gloomy it was on Sat;

The whole ride was pretty much like in the pics - a lot of field scenery, and a few small villages and canal-side pubs along the way too. On Sunday we did something I really regret, and that's walk the whole way back along the canal to get the car from the mooring so that Mike can get to work - that's about 11 miles of walking, and on the last mile I was literally dragging myself along the towpath. We won't be doing that again when it's time to take the boat back to the mooring, we'll be getting a lift. I hope I can write another blog entry soon saying the boat's hull is fine ...

Today I've been working on my website to get my rankings higher and all that, and I've also been adding Mike's business details to listings on the internet - quite boring work to constantly add the same details over and over again, but it's worth it in the end. I can't wait to add more layers to the paintings that are drying, especially Jack & Gingy's portrait. Because it's cotton and not linen, I find that the colour sinks a lot more, I don't know if other artists agree, but it takes longer to complete if this happens. I don't want to paint onto cotton again, it's so bumpy that it's difficult to add detail, especially on such a small portrait.

When Mike gets back from work today we will be going on a boat ride, and it's been raining on and off all day - not the best conditions really. It's windy too, which makes it almost impossible to turn the boat around without annoying complications occuring. This boat journey will be the first since the engine was repaired.

One last thing - no Britain's Got Talent tonight - Steven Hall was my favourite, I was laughing so much I was nearly crying! He's actually good - Pharoah dance! : )

When painting portraits everything has to be as perfect as possible, so sometimes it's good to just paint something messily and freely, and to practice with new mediums and techniques.

This is from a beautiful photo I found on morguefile (I'm not sure if I'm finished with it yet);

And here are some more scribbles I've been experimenting with;

Brewood in Staffordshire (painted ages ago, and will be re-painting because I love the photograph);

Lastly, this is my first pencil pet portrait of a corgi. I know it's nothing special but I want to start offering pencil portraits as well as oil because I can charge a lot less for them. Need to practice a lot more first though. This took me about 3 mins! Ignore the nose, I just scribbled it on : )

This is a small 10x10 inch portrait on cotton (which I don't usually paint on) canvas instead of linen, because I couldn't find any small linen from my art materials supplier's site.

I am painting from a very small photograph which has hardly any detail but is very cute - it's of two kittens, Jack & Gingy, and the portrait is for my mom. Jack's got his paw on Gingy's back, and they are sitting by the fire in the photo, which I will scan onto the computer when I've got chance.

Another thing, didn't think I'd ever say this but I'm currently painting to Kesha, who I've never liked much to be honest, but now I love 'The Harold Song'. I can't paint unless I'm listening to music on my MP3 or Radio 1. Others I love painting to at the minute is Muse, The Killers and Katy B. It changes frequently : )

Here are the first two stages;

I haven't updated my blog for a long time, I've had my mind on other things, mainly our narrowboat which has to come out of the water for a hull inspection soon - very nervous about this! I just hope it all goes smoothly.

I've just ordered a bulk of art materials so I'll be starting some new paintings in the next few days, one of which will be of Hollie, my alsation, who still hasn't had a proper portrait of herself painted even though I've been doing this for ages now! I also want to paint some scenes of Brewood, had a look on the internet and couldn't find much Brewood artwork really. Shame, because it's a pretty village. Can't wait to start, : )

I've re-done ALL of my gallery images, which has taken forever, and I've added new images to each individual portrait page to show the portrait progress and a couple of close-ups. Here are some of the new images; the rest can be seen in the gallery.

I've added quite a lot of content to my site, mainly information and advice about my portraits - the new pages are all here - information pages and my dog Hollie is the star of the photography section! I still need to add a lot more images to add to the writing, and I'll be working on that over the next few weeks.

I will be photographing the development of a portrait from start to finish so that I can show EXACTLY how I layer my oil paintings, the images will all be added to this page - My Painting Methods and hopefully this will be of interest to other artists as well as clients.

I've also added a webform to my contact page so that customers can easily contact me and just fill in the relevant information.

I have so much to do over the next few weeks, I'm really looking forward to getting back into the routine of painting full time! : )

I haven't updated my blog for a long time now mainly because I cut my finger (about 2 inch) on some glass quite badly about a month ago, and it's only just healed properly, so I haven't been painting very much. But I will update everything very soon and I will be catching up with all my portraits. Doctor said I'm extremely lucky not to have done serious damage because the cut was deep and it was right next to ... something important, a ligament I think he said. Whatever it's called, it was white because I could see it! Unless that was bone - I didn't ask. Makes me feel squeamish thinking about it.

I will post the finished cat portrait and I'll be updating my gallery, because it's not very big at the moment. I'll also be starting a new portrait of my own dog Hollie, which I'm really looking forward to.

This was the first 'proper' oil painting that I attempted a few years ago now when I was about 18 years old, I loved painting it so I continued with the same medium creating pet portraits.