Sketchbook: Dogs! Breed heads/drawings/sketches

Firstly, apologies! For I have been very quiet (again)! I realised today that lately, I have been very lazy with updating my blog, making very irregular and few updates...I have actually forgotten all about it at times. I have been updating my facebook page with works in progress, however I think it is time I returned to creating full, slightly more interesting posts here once again.

I am quite a quiet and reserved person and it takes a lot for me to speak out and be open about things including my work, so a lot of the time I do find it quite difficult to keep up with my blogs and networking sites because it is not something that comes naturally to me! Although, if I do it more often, perhaps it can help me become better at talking about my work?

I have some bits of news, some thoughts, and some new projects to share, so hopefully all of this will help keep me from being too quiet for a while!

~

Sketchbook: Dogs! 

As I might have explained in previous posts, I have been working on expanding my portfolio with new and quite different work. I have lists of ideas and subjects that I would like to illustrate, one of which is dogs! So loveable and expressive; every dog I have met has had such a wonderfully distinctive personality. Also, dogs are everywhere!

To give my illustrations context, I decided to aim to create images for a clothing brand - a dog clothing brand that is - an online store called Urban Pup. (I love that you can have things personalised!) Here are some of my initial drawings of studies for head and shoulder illusts of the individual but equally lovable dog breeds, modelling some (urban) fashion styles inspired by the Urban Pup range.

 

A first idea for a possible layout for a mock print-advertisement:

 

After these initial drawings, it was clear the dog models needed to be much more "cute" and so this time I draw a lot more whilst really trying to emphasise the cute and loveable-ness but still keep a realistic style.

 

More progression on the Urban Pup project to follow very soon :)

Framed Poodle Portraits and Sarah's framed fish print!

My friend Sarah bought her Mum a print (from my Society 6 shop) of my three oranda fish for Mother's Day this year and she has kindly sent me some photos of it and where it hangs in her study!

   I also finally found some frames for my poodle portraits so I could finally give them to my Dad, (I was contemplating waiting until Christmas!) and he has hung them in his and my Mum's bedroom! (I gave my Dad both of them in the end, and he loves them!) You can see the full portraits of Rosie the miniature poodle here.

 The "poodle portraits" are of Rosie, my sweet, crazy little miniature poodle. She's 14 now but still bouncing off the walls like a puppy. I've had a few comments referring to whether Rosie is a grey poodle, well, here's the star of the show herself-she's black, with a lot of silver, not actually completely grey all over like my pale water colours suggest....after testing out shades of black I didn't like how muddy they looked so I went with a paler, more flattering colour scheme of greyish blue.

Poodle Portraits!

My Mum suggested it might be a nice idea to surprise my Dad with a portrait of Rosie our miniature poodle,  as part of his 50th Birthday gifts. I'm not sure which one I'm going to give him yet, I think my Mum can choose since it was all her idea! When its decided, I'll frame it and wrap it up. I can't wait to surprise him!

 

Doggie Sketchies (Poodles and Great Danes!)

Some sketching of poochies to help me get back into the swing of things. My main inspirations are my 14 year old miniature poodle Rosie and my friend Emily's 3 month old great dane pup.