I Got Published

I was pleasantly surprised and very pleased to receive an e-mail telling me that a short story of mine, entitled Forget-me-not, has been published and is now ready to be viewed and enjoyed, at http://thrillskillsnchills.blogspot.com

I have, to date, only recently started to write again after a very long absence and have only written a small number of short stories/Flash fiction. Writing used to be a passion of mine and while I had had some work published, it was mainly in the local newspapers and an international magazine, but that was all a long time ago.

A few months ago my passion for writing surfaced again and I decided to try the challenge of writing flash fiction after reading some excellent work on the net. I joined a writing group and was encouraged to submit my stories to varying online magazines. After some thought I finally did that but I did lack confidence after all, and I really did not expect to be published, even though I did hope it might be published someday.

I have written four short stories to date and I did submit all of them. One of my other stories, entitled ‘Red Christmas’ will be published on 20th December at

http://apollos-lyre.tripod.com

With regards to the other two I patiently await their fate.

As you may have guessed I didn’t get any art done today as planned, nor will I be able to tomorrow as life is busy at the moment and Christmas is just around the corner and presents need to be bought and last minute things need to be done, but that is expected at this time of year.

I do hope to get some artwork done this week but I cannot now promise. However, I hope you will keep popping in as I will post something each day, so see you soon.
E.

Ramblings of the day.

Well after a very busy, but enjoyable day, I haven’t been able to post as early as I like to. As you might have guessed I haven’t done any artwork today and with a busy weekend the only thing I did manage to get done was to choose my next project, which I will tell you about tomorrow – sorry to make you wait, I hope you forgive me.

In the mean time I can say that I did get a little time on the internet to read my posts and have a quick look at a couple of things of interest. One of my interests, and one of the things I have promised myself to do, is a pen and ink drawing. OK, if you look at my web site you will see that I have done pen and ink before simply because I love to explore and use different mediums, visit my web site and see Mallard on Water. But I do, at some point, intend to do a little more in this medium.

Here, if I may, I would like to mention an excellent artist who uses this medium to great effect. If you get a moment visit Vincent Whitehead’s wonderful site. He really is worth a visit. I have for ages now, tried to get Vincent to write a book about his methods of using Pen and Ink and I think, and hope, that he is now collecting material for his book so when he does get it published it will certainly be worth buying – after me of course as I am first in line.

I cannot, in all good conscience, omit another wonderful artist, Mr. Mike Sibley, to give him his full title. He has an excellent site at www.SibleyFineArt.com.

You can spend ages reading his site. I love to read his old Greensfields Gazette – which unfortunately he doesn’t keep it up these days and yes, I have mentioned this to him, but, being as busy as he is, poor old Mike just doesn’t have time these days, and if he reads the word ‘Old’ guess who might be in trouble, so don’t tell him

I have Mike’s book, Drawing from Line to Life, and can highly recommend it to anyone interested in learning how to use graphite to the best advantage, it covers so much that you will not be disappointed. I can also highly recommend his workshops too, which I have taken part in myself so give it a thought along with his book.

This posting is sounding like an advertizment I know but if I find a really good artist I think I should recommend them to anyone interested. To play fair, and I do try to do that, if I find anything of interest I will post it, on any subject, as I didn’t intend this blog to be just art related.

Well I think that is all of my ramblings for today so I hope you will join me tomorrow when I hope to post the drawing of my next project.
If you have any comments let me know, i will be happy to read and respond too.
See you tomorrow.
E.

Sheep Drawing – Final Part

My next stage was to work on the horn. This, of course had to show its shape, its roundness but also the texture of the horn itself. Again I recalled touching and feeling a horn. It felt hard and cold and rough in parts yet smooth in other parts. After thinking about this for a while I began work. Again I used an HB pencil and slowly worked in the different areas of the horn that I could remember.

After completing the horn, which took quite a while to complete, I felt I needed to step back and take a long look at my work. I usually leave my work for a day or two in a prominent place so I can keep looking at it and evaluating it.

I made notes on what I thought needed altering and set to work on it again.

I altered the tonal values so each value would blend with the one above it as the sheep was lighter on the head darkening on the shoulders then a little darker on the back and around the chest area. I also went back and altered the tonal values of the face a little and darkened the eye a bit. The tonal values of the ear and horn were also altered because once you alter one value it has an impact on all of the other values.

My final thing was to put a shadow on the coat reflected from the horn. This showed the separation of horn and coat.

I decided it was completed when hubby dearest told me the coat looked nice and thick and Leah told me it looked like a really nice sheep. Since my two critics were happy so was I.

If you have any questions or comments about this piece I would love to hear them so please feel free to do just that.

At this point I have no idea what I will do next. I will ponder that question for a while and you will just have to return to get the answer.

Next post on Monday so I am looking forward to seeing you then.

E.

Sheep Drawing – part three

As can be seen in the next stage I decided to mark out the clumps of wool. I wasn’t going for detailed work here as I knew I would be changing it a lot as I worked but I did want to get a feel for the wool and its density, if I could achieve a look of thickness in the wool that would show its texture I would be happy. I recall being able to put my fingers deep into a sheep’s coat so I wanted to convey that feeling of shaggy sheep coat. Here I also worked on the ear. I wanted the shadows on the ear to show depth curves and thickness.

I continued to work on the sheep’s coat in stages. I began with his head as the lightest part again using a 2H pencil. As I worked around his neck and down to his chest the coat was not only thicker but more in thick long clumps. I used an HB pencil for the darker areas of his coat softening as I went from area to area because I didn’t want hard edges. The coat took quite a long time to complete as I kept going back and forth altering the tonal values of each area. If I got an area darker than I wanted I would use Blu-Tac to lift some of the graphite.

Since the sheep is white I wanted to keep it light in value but I was also aware that sheep are never really white since they live in a field and it rains and gets muddy so do the sheep. As I said earlier I live in town so I am not really familiar with farm animals but I don’t know of anyone who has seen a really white sheep apart from those that are shown and there, I believe, they are bathed and spruced up for the judges. My sheep however, was a plain old ordinary sheep who was there to simply show off the breed to the visitors’ at the museum. Perhaps he has been shown to judges’ in his life.
i will post the final part tomorrow so hope to see you then.
E.

Sheep Drawing – part two.

I began, as always, on his eye. If I do not get the eye of any subject as I want it then I don’t proceed. This sheep’s eye was almost closed so a lot of very long eyelashes is really all that can be seen on him, whereas on most animals, birds and humans that I draw there is usually a larger eye to work on with a nice highlight to show life and character but, on this sheep there was none of that.

After completing the eye, although I may later go back into it and darken it a little, as often happens, I went to the nose area and completed that area before going onto the mouth. The nose, like the eye, will be altered later if needs be. This is my usual way of working when doing animals, birds or indeed humans. As can be seen from my site, www.eyshasfineart.co.uk I like variety and each new subject is a challenge.

My next step was to do his face. I had completed the eye, nose and mouth in 2H and decided I had to do his face in the same pencil only much, much lighter because this sheep is white unlike his very many cousins. A very light touch was needed here and then I blended the strokes carefully with a piece of very soft tissue. I used an HB pencil to put in the darker shadowed area as can be seen between his face and the start of his coat.

Everything can, and most likely will, be altered at a later stage and certainly before the completion of this portrait.

From the initial sketch to this stage took me some four hours.

Sheep Drawing

Another challenge. I just love a challenge.

I decided to do a portrait of a Sheep.

I like to meet, and take my own photographs of the animals or humans I intend to draw if possible but this is not always the case of course. For commission work, where I cannot take my own reference photographs, the only thing I do ask is that I am sent a detailed photograph to work from as the detail is so important to show the character of the subject.

I am not really familiar with sheep as I live in town, but this photograph was very useable, nice and clear with plenty of detail in it, I printed out the photograph to use as my reference. I decided to make this boy’s portrait, do you call male sheep boys, a 7×5 inch graphite as I felt graphite would best suit him. My support is Melotex and I decided to have him displayed in plenty of room so I used A4 size.

The pencils I use are Staedtler Mars 780 for all my graphite work.

I began as always by sketching out a rough outline of him to get things in the right place. Once happy I did a layout sketch before transferring it to my Melotex. The finished sketch is now ready to start work on.
(The photo was taken with my camera and is a little darker than i would like but i cannot go back now so i hope you get the idea.)

I will post the next part tomorrow so see you then.
E.

Welcome to my Blog.

Welcome to my first blog, well my second really. I did have a blog a long time ago but to be honest I didn’t write in it every day and it lapsed. While this blog will be a place to discuss my artwork and show it, I also want it to be about other things and not just art.

My daughter, Leah, tried to get me to keep a journal and I even bought a special book just for that purpose at the beginning of this year, but my good intentions slipped somewhat and I only wrote in that book for a few weeks. This time I must be stricter with myself and write everyday although Leah feels it best to write at night then I can chat about the day’s events.

I want this blog to be both friendly and interesting. Friendly I can do, interesting might be a challenge because what interests one doesn’t interest another so I intend to chat about all sorts of things. I spent some time reading various blogs to see what was chatted about and was surprised to be able to read about anything.

I will be posting my latest piece of artwork soon and hope to receive questions about it that I will be happy to answer so on that note please feel free to mail me and ask questions about anything I write about, always happy to reply.

Come back soon to read the next post.
E.