Anabelle Joy series

For the past month and a half I have been working on a set of baby portraits for a friend of mine who commissioned the drawings as a gift for his wife's birthday. The birthday is past and I can finally show you all!









You can see the whole with WIPs here.

In memory of...

This beautiful blue heeler belonged to close friends of ours. I did this piece as a memorial gift for them when she passed suddenly not long ago.
This is the first graphite piece I've finished in ages. Feels good to be back. :)
Michelle

NOOOO!

Oh man! I stuffed it! I was so close to being finished and then I decided, for some unknown reason, to try blending with a tissue. Unfortunately for me it must have had some kind of moisturising additive in it, because it made an unholy mess of my drawing....I haven't had the motivation to pick it up since LOL.



I did do a baby portrait in the meantime though, and I have started on a self portrait. I'll include a scan of the baby pic with this post, and then I'll post the SP a bit later on when it's looking a bit more presentable.



The baby portrait is approximately 5x7", graphite on bristol board.

FRAMED!!

And this is what it looks like framed up. All of the drawings are 3 inches square...but the apperture of the frames are 2.5 inches square...

Happy Birthday Sis

All finished!

Here's the last groover :o)

Sneaky Peek #3

Sneaky Peek #2

Here's the next little cherub ;o)

Sneaky Peek ;o)

Here's a sneaky peak of a montage portrait I'm doing for my cousin's birthday...it's not going to be done on time..but that's the way it goes at the moment LOL. I'm not going to say my more than that so the game is not entirely given away hehehehe. Size: 3 inches square. Graphite on Windsor and Newton 2 ply bristol board.

Happy birthday sis :o)

M

Almost there! I'm at the stage where I am starting to tweak bits and pieces...at the moment I'm fiddling with her teeth and hair...not completely happy with either of these areas just yet. I'll be delivering the dude in the next couple of days...so I'll post a final pic veeery shortly :o)

M

Half way there...

Another bad PDA photo I'm afraid :( It's all a bit wishy washy...but you can see where I'm up to at least.

Rob is pretty much done except for some final tweaking at the end...there is a fair bit more detail in his hair than can be seen in this shot.

Hmm now that I am looking at this photo... I need to soften the shadow that defines his cheek and comes down to the corner of his mouth....looks a little Scarface-ish LOL ...will be fixed for next installment. ;)

M

Movin right along!

I got lots of drawing done this past weeked because the DH was away :o)

The eyes are about 90% done...I'll go back and push the darks a bit at the end to balance the whole pic and refine it a bit.

I also did his shirt..and a bit of hers, and started to fiddle with his hair.

Back to the drawing board!

M

One Eyeball muwahahaha!

Started on the eyes. Sorry the photo is bad...DH took off with my good camera for the weekend, so I took this with my pda phone's dinky little camera. :(

A couple of hours in and I've got the background ninety percent done, and have started on Rob's hair...I will probably move to working on his eyes next I think.

I love surprises!

This one is going to be fun! The young guy in this portrait has commissioned the drawing for his girlfriend for Christmas. It's a great pose...very different to the usual portraits I get to do...but the photo was taken at close range with a flash, so some of the features have been flattened somewhat... my challenge this time will be to have good modelling and a good range of tones in the facial features.

I'm doing this one on Fabriano Artistico (ya..I finally got my hands on my favourite paper again YAY!) ...size is 8x10" with a nice tight crop so the whole of the image area will be covered in graphite. The Fabriano allows me to make some really nice rich darks without too much shine as is common with graphite...so that background will be solid black...I think I'll start there to set the overall tone of the piece...........off to the drawing board!

M

Baby BJ Finished!

Finished! This little cutie has turned out much better than I had anticipated and I am quite chuffed with the texture I was able to create for her jumpsuit...in the past I usually rushed to finish the clothing on a subject without giving it the same attention as the face and hair, but this time I forced myself to slow down and work at getting a realistic fluffy texture...I'm not sure that it shows up particularly well on the scan, but I am REALLY happy with it :o) Now all I need to do is matt and frame it ready for delivery...if I remember I'll take a piccy and post it so you can see the finished product.

M

Two Cheeks! :o)

The face is basically done for the moment. I may need to go back and darken the right side of the face a little more, but I'll decide that later on. The digital photo has dropped out some of the mid tones along BJ's jaw line...so the line is a little harsh, but it is a nice soft gradation IRL.

Next step....hair!

Cheeky Baby BJ

I've started to darken the right side of the forehead that is in shadow, and I've started to model the nose , left cheek and upper lip, and already baby BJ is starting to look a little more smiley. :o)

Don't you just love baby cheeks?? I just want to pinch 'em!

Baby BJ finding the darks

Okay...now I've started to establish the darkest areas of the portrait so that I can use them as a guage for the rest of the tones in the portrait and keep things balanced as I go along.


Baby BJ is looking a little stunned at the moment :o) but that will turn into a gorgeous smile as I begin to render the upper lip and chubby cheeks. You may also notice that she doesn't have eye lashes yet...I like to wait until very close to the end in case I need to adjust any of the tones around her eyes.

I think I've probaby put 5 or 6 hours into this so far.

Baby BJ

I love drawing babies! All that smooth skin and wonderful big eyes! This is a project that I am doing as a baby gift for a good friend of mine of her beautiful little girl. I think its always more fun drawing people I know...there seems to be more of a connection...that and I can have fun deciding which of her parents BJ got her features from :o).


So..here goes...I'm using 2b and H graphite on Strathmore Bristol 300 series smooth.


I always start by rendering the eyes...if I can't good a good likeness in the eyes, it's useless trying to complete the portrait.

Next I'll start to establish some of the darkest areas of the portrait so that I can keep the tone balanced as I go along.