For two more days I have been drawing this portrait. I also had to redo the entire nose as it didn’t look good enough. No fine details were visible so I had to redo it and I think the entire drawing looks better because of that. Well, quite a bit of the dog is now finished and I will continue working on him today. I think it will take a few more days to finish the drawing as I will do the rest of the dog as detailed as the head area. I didn’t use any indenting tool for this drawing. So here he is, Taisho with one detail image included.

Step four of pencil drawing

Close-up of pencil drawing

So I have been working with the colored pencil portrait of horses Albin and Nicke. This is a big drawing, in fact the biggest size available for commissioning from me. It will take some time to complete this drawing and I can’t wait to see it when it’s finished. Now I will continue working with Taisho and complete that drawing before I will continue with this colored pencil drawing. I have decided to start working with one painting or drawing at the time, otherwise it feels like noting is done at all and I need to concentrate mainly on one artwork at the time as I’m also working with design.

My drawings are very time-consuming; it really doesn’t pay off to draw them because at the end I’m working for pennies or ören here in Sweden even though my drawings aren’t really affordable for the customers. Well, it’s hard to have too expensive prices these days. But for me it’s more important to do what I love, it’s not about the money at all. My husband has a regular job so it’s easier for me.
Because the drawing is so big I don’t scan the steps, I don’t want to destroy the paper with moving it from the easel to the scanner to much.

Step 1 of horse portraits in colored pencil

I had a little holiday for Easter but started to draw in Tuesday and this is how far I got. I will have to go back and correct same details though, since I drew a bit sloppy in the beginning. For the holidays we didn’t anything special. I took it easy for a few days and we went to eat the typical Swedish food at my mothers, my friend came to visit and that’s also about it. Nothing special at all. Yesterday we went to see my son play soccer again. He himself didn’t do any goals this time, but they won the game with 1-2. It was a nice game, only fair play.

Step three of Taisho

Step three of dog pencil portrait

So this is Taisho, the graceful dog I’m currently working on. I never posted the first step in my blog so I’m uploading both steps at the same time. I don’t show the entire paper area on the earliest stages because there is nothing but a few lines over there. I’m scanning the areas where there is some work done since it’s not interesting to see only lines.

The reference photograph is perfect really, so this drawing will be beautiful. I even decided to create this one in print quality and the client agreed to my question about if I could use it for open edition prints. So this drawing will actually be my first open edition print. Of course it will take around 70 hours to complete this drawing. So here is Taisho…

Graphite pencil drawing of Dog - step2

Graphite pencil drawing of Dog - step1

I’m so sloppy when it comes to post in my blog. It can take a while in between the posts but better late then never. It has been quite fun to work with this drawing. At first I didn’t want to create a drawing out of the reference photograph because I thought it wasn’t the quality I needed. Later I thought I can take on the commission but let the client know that the dark areas will look like on the photo and it was nothing else I could do with it, since there were only blank dark areas in this photo and nothing else to take from it.

The client said it’s all right and luckily the drawing turned out really well. The client has already received the pencil drawing and did let me know about how happy he is with it. The portrait is a very late birthday gift for Hamid which is portrayed much younger then he is today. I hope he will like it too.

The client who commissioned the oil painting of Duck tolling retrievers Gully and Jixxy rushed with the painting to a local framer as soon as she received the painting. She chose a really cool frame that suits the painting perfectly. It looks like the frame is part of the painting actually, same kind of colors as the background. Nice! Thanks for sending me the photo of Jixxy next to the painting! Don’t forget to scroll down to see step four of Hamid also.

Next week I will start to give private classes to two “students”. One young girl and a lady that wants to learn how to create pet drawings in colored pencils. These two lives from 30 minutes to 1 hour drive from me and they asked me them selves. They have waited quite some time for me to let them know when they can start. Maybe I will take two more students at a later stage for art classes if I will find this rewarding in any way.

Clients photograph of framed oil painting

Pencil drawing of Hamid - close-up

Pencil portrait of Hamid - final scan

It has been a while since I completed the drawing of Hamid but I never posted the fourth step of the drawing. So here it is:

Step four of Hamid