Monday, May 8, 2017

A facebook 'Painting a Day' challenge

My bestie of 50 years, Jan Martin, has asked me to do the 'painting a day' thing on Facebook. I have done this before and as many of you out there will agree, it's a bit of a pain getting 7 friends to accept the challenge of doing this every day of the week. Jan assured me I only needed one person at the end of the week, so this is much more 'doable' than every day [and the bonus is that she has a friend already agreeing to take over next week - Y...E...S....!]
I have been procrastinating over doing a commission drawing/painting for a friend of a friend. The image I am to draw is a much loved canine member of the family who is quite elderly and maybe not long for this world. Such a responsibility! Also I want to work on paper, and being confronted with a pristine sheet of 640gsm Arches which cost me $35 is daunting - I usually work on recycled canvases which cost me nothing!!!
Jan's challenge has given me just the boot up the proverbial that I need. I will post on the progress every day this week, so by the end of the week, voila!!, it will be finished.
All I need now is to figure out how to link my blog with my 2 Facebook accounts and my Instagram account and all will be well with the world!
Preliminary sketches to get the feel of the image [golden retriever], and trials of 'brushes' to get the texture of the fur.

 argh.....white paper!!!

 OK, so maybe I should get all the proportions right, so after recalling a bit of high school maths, ! work out a rough grid - drawing on the photo and taping grey cotton thread over the paper.
 Which drawing medium will I use to rough in the image?

 I settled for a regular 4B pencil - a good idea as I had to do a bit of erasing and redrawing....hope the paper surface will hold up.

 Final sketch for the day, I'll take the thread off tomorrow and have another panic attack as I start the water colour shadows.

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