I drew this little guy in my Sketchbook Skool Spark class on Sunday and forgot to post the portrait until today. I love drawing dogs, maybe because I don’t feel so much pressure to get a good likeness and I always think that with dogs it’s all about the eyes and nose. Dog’s noses are so much fun to draw!
Drawn with ballpoint pens in a Moleskine sketchbook.
For the last day of September I drew Hannah’s dog on my iPad Pro using the Procreate app again. Tomorrow Inktober begins and I’m going to try to draw with ballpoints every day. I’m not sure if I’ll manage a portrait a day for the whole of October but I’ll give it my best shot.
I love cows. I love most animals, but farm animals hold a special place in my heart. My favourite toy as a child was a toy farm and when I was about 6 I was present at the birth of a calf. It was the most amazing thing I’d ever seen and that event has stayed with me my whole life. I love cows. I also love to draw them. And Sktchy muse Eli’s photo of this cow was irresistible.
I drew this in my Midori Cotton sketchbook using a Unipin fineliner, Copic markers, and Prismacolor coloured pencils.
I’ve never drawn a donkey before but I did choose a very pretty one for my first donkey portrait. This was drawn from a photo shared on Sktchy by Linda. Isn’t she a beautiful creature?
I drew this portrait on my iPad Pro with an Apple Pencil using the Procreate app.
This May I’m going to be part of an artists open house in the Brighton Fringe Festival. The open house is at the National Trust’s Saddlescombe Farm, and will raise funds for the Grow Project, a project which helps support people experiencing mental health problems by connecting them with nature.
The theme for the open house is “Spirit of Place” and I’ll be putting some prints of my more nature-themed portraits up for sale. I already have some portraits that I know I’ll be using but I also want to create some new work to make into cards and possibly postcards, so I’ll be making more nature-themed portraits over the next few weeks. This portrait of Melody’s owl is the first of these.
I drew the owl in my Midori Cotton sketchbook with Copic markers, coloured pencils and a Uniball Signo gel pen.
This is Joey. We met Joey 18 months ago at the Dogs Trust Rescue Centre in Shoreham-by-Sea. He’d been waiting there for us for around 3 years. We visited him most days for a month to get to know him before he was comfortable enough with us to let us adopt him. Now he’s been living happily with us for more than a year and we adore him. He’s most happy snuggled under the duvet with someone or with a toy in his mouth playing a pulling game.
He’s still a very nervous dog and always will be. He hates my phone camera and usually walks away when he sees it so I have to be sneaky with toys or treats to get smiley photos like this one. But this is a great photo for a portrait. And Anna, his trainer at the Dogs Trust, requested more portraits of Joey. So here’s number one.
I drew Joey in my Midori Cotton sketchbook with Copic markers and Prismacolor coloured pencils.
I painted this fawn for this week’s Old School Sktchy weekly art extravaganza (wax) challenge on the theme ” zoological”.
I drew it in a Moleskine watercolour sketchbook with a Unipin light grey fineliner, painted it with Zecchi Toscana watercolours and finished it with Prismacolor coloured and a Uniball Signo with gel pen.
This is a commission that I received through Sktchy. Commissions are always a double-edged sword for me; there’s the thrill that someone wants to pay me to paint a portrait for them, but then there’s the pressure of having to live up to their expectations, to produce something “good”, worth what they are paying.
The way it works on Sktchy is that the artist receives a request to draw a particular photo, which you can then accept or decline. When I saw this photo my first instinct was to decline because the thought of painting a curly haired dog filled me with fear. But, of course, I didn’t, because I love a good challenge – and I’m so glad I didn’t. This dog is a beauty and painting it was such a pleasure. I had to work hard to figure out how to paint that curly hair but I worked it out and I’m so happy with the finished portrait.
I painted Joni’s dog in a Laloran sketchbook with Zecchi watercolours and finished it with Prismacolor coloured pencils.
Drawing dogs is always so much fun. It’s important to get the eyes and nose right, but the rest is fairly straightforward. Sktchy muse Muffin is soaking up the sun so it was important to get the closed eyes and the shadows more or less right and to capture something of his handsomeness – is that a word? Anyway I’m happy with how it turned out – he looks like a contented doggy.
I drew this in my Moleskine sketchbook with Copic multiliners and markers.
drawing faces 