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pyrrhite — Little Ann
Published: 2010-06-28 04:02:58 +0000 UTC; Views: 1335; Favourites: 80; Downloads: 25
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Description
Never seen a sweeter face.A commissioned portrait of a dearly loved old girl who died earlier this year.
30 hours would probably be a sizable under-estimate.
2B, HB, 6H, 7H, on plate finish Bristol.
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Comments: 283
Wow you are super talented. This is beautiful. 
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thank you very much, happy you think so!
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I think she's such a sweetie! Thank you!
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she had a dear dear face I thought, thank you.
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It's amazing...
I envy your talent so much...
But it's not a bad thing... (Envy usually is)
I admire you!
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Oh-h...
Very sweet of you, but your talent is amazing too, you know. Your photographs are gorgeous.
Thanks.
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Very cute. The only critique I would have is that it appears that the reference photo was taken with flash, which eliminates all the sculpting that sidelight does... but that's really just more complaining about reference photo... the detail in the drawing is amazing
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I'm sure it was taken with a flash--I've done three for this woman and so far every reference was a flash photo, but it's beyond me to correct for it. I was just grateful it was reasonably clear- as it was I had to brown out the flash eyes but oh well.
Thnaks!
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Yeah it's really hard to change the lighting from a ref photo. I wish I could.
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What I see is what you get, so to speak.
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A wonderful and vivid portrait.
The dog looks somewhat like a Akita-mix.
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Akita, that's a good thought. I had thought maybe Chow but she doesn't have that sort of face at all.
I really must ask her owner.
And thank you!
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You're welcome and you'll never know which genes come through - but in this case a Chow wouldn't be my first guess, too.
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She may have bear genes from the look of her.
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Heh, thank you Philippe, I understand!
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great job capturing the sweetness of her eyes, amazing.
I have another quick, stupid question... when I submit a work for a show or exhibition how do I have any idea what to put as a sell prices?Sorry, I'm just clueless. Hope things are going well and you are enjoying nice weather.
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I should add that if you are selling a framed piece don't forget to add in the cost of the frame.
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Hello, and thank you!
No stupid questions--or maybe there are but you haven't asked any yet.
Prices are a bit of a bugbear for sure. You can figure roughly how many hours you spent then figure what you want to get per hour and see if that seems reasonable. What I did to set my prices was to go online and look for artists doing pencil work of a similar quality to mine, and see what they were charging. That gave me a pretty good idea of what the range was, and worth doing I think.
Things are fine here except it's hot, muggy and the deer flies won't let the horses out of their sheds...
Please don't be hesitant to ask whatever you like, I am no expert but I'll tell you what I can.
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thank you, I really appreciate all your feedback. You are a great resource.
I'll just have to start looking to see what I can find and see how it goes. We'll be in touch as I have more questions, I promise. Let me know if you have more suggestions.
That muggy humidity really wore on me, it has been really cool here... in the 70s instead of 90s so I have been loving it, but because of the wet spring the mosquitos have been bad.
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Oh I hate it, and tomorrow is supposed to be the worst day of the week, so of course that's when we're getting in our hay...
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I'm still trying to get my latest drawing of my colt Buddy done, seems like it takes for ever to get my drawing dark enough especially since I switched from regular computer paper to bristol with a vellium finish any suggestions?
Hope it's cooling off a little, bet it sure is green though.
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Are you minding the vellum finish? It has more tooth than the smooth so actually should take the darks better that way, but you have to work with the paper texture too. A couple of my dog portraits are on vellum, including [link]
What pencils are you using?
I got my blacks here with layers of 3B, maybe 4B, can't remember, HB and 7H, I keep going over the darker pencil with the harder pencil, then repeat if and as much as I need to, to get my darkest darks.
A little cooler because it's overcast, but we haven't had rain to go with the heat so things are starting to get crispy. Got my hay in Tuesday, that's always a huge relief, such miserable work on the hottest day of the summer so far. But it's in now!
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I guess I just need to keep layering like you say...I just have to keep reworking it as I darken it because I start losing some details.
I've never tried the smooth finish yet.
Ya, I've heard you guys are having a heat wave, no fun.
Boy, you were right about the price of custom framing. Whew...my goal was to sell a drawing or two this year but I doubt I could sell one for what it cost to frame that way. I'm just gunna see about buying some decent frames and matting and seeing what I can do on my own.
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What pencils are you using?
Nothing wrong with buying ready-made frames and mattes, if your work lends itself to standard sizes.
Ideally you would have a double matte, with an inner matte to match your darker tones and an outer matte the same shade of white as your paper. You will be limited when buying off the rack, but it doesn't matter, at this point you just want to get a decent presentation going.
Buy some acid-free tape for attaching your drawing to the matte board. Tape using what is called a hinge joint, only tape at the top so your drawing doesn't buckle. Then back the matted drawing with another piece of matte board or foam core board, and put it in your frame.
A nice finish and not hard to do,if you choose a wooden frame, is a dust jacket: [link]
Look for acid-free papers and matte board too.
Stay simple, you don't want your frame to compete with your drawing. A simple metal frame or a plain narrow wooden frame is best. Silver or grey is better than black or white.
Crash course in framing, I know.
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That was great info, about exactly what I was looking for. My work lately has been standard sizes anyways so I think for now it will work just fine.
I do most of my work in a .3 HB mechanical pencil which I love and then try to highlight and darken with neros by cretacolor using mostly their soft (they use medium, soft, extra soft instead of 3B and so on). I don't use extra soft or charcoal as much because it can seem to leave too much "grain" behind.
I guess I'm still learning to keep all my details while getting the overall darkness and going completely from a detailed sketch drawing to a fully detailed value shading drawing.
I hope things are going well for you, as you are giving me such beneficial help and advice. I really appreciate it. Now you have your hay in hopefully you don't have to fight the heat so much, we will be haying in about I week. I will help my father in law out as much as I can with it.
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I just read over the link I sent and it doesn't even explain how to do a dust jacket, which was sort of the whole point...but it was a good framing overview just the same.
If you go with wood frames, to make a dust jacket all you do is cut a piece of brown paper, Kraft or butcher or even a paper bag, to fit the back of your frame, glue it with white glue along the entire back edge of the frame, and after it dries, wipe the paper down with a wet sponge. It tightens as it dries and makes a nice professional-looking finish.
I use .3 a lot too, and .5 along with wood cased pencils for back-up. I am not familiar with neros, are they graphite? I don't know what's usual these days but I would be nervous about mixing graphite and charcoal in the detailed precise kind of work you do, for precisely the reason you say, of all the residue, and I can see where you might lose detail. Also I don't know how well they combine if you layer them. But that might just be my ignorance, I've never worked with charcoal or neros so don't know how they behave. On the other hand unless you already know you don't like softer pencils, they're cheap enough it might be worth getting a range of two or three just to see what you think.
Again, happy to tell you what I can, I am delighted you are serious about getting your work out there and seen, it deserves to be.
Are you getting in first cut?
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I will have to try the dust jacket.
You are right the neros are charcoal. So maybe that is part of the problem. I'm gunna try a few others and see how they treat me.
Thanks for the encouragement, I'm still pretty nervous about how my work will be recieved. But deviantart has helped a lot in that regard so I am curious to see.
Ya it will be the first and only cut of hay.
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Well however your art is received remember the art world is very hit and miss, people might love your stuff at one show and ignore it at another, and it's not often easy to sell especially at first, but I don't know why people wouldn't really love your work.
Only one cut per year?
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Ya it's dry farm hay, cows will be on it till fall after that. At that elevation it's a short growing season, especially dry farmed.
Thank you for the perspective. I will keep that in mind.
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Never heard of dry farming other than farming when it doesn't rain...do you truck in hay or do you have pasture all year for the horses?
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Dry farming is what they call it out here when it's not irrigated with sprinklers. My father in law will sell most of his hay then keep enough for our herd of horses. We have plenty of pasture but with the snow and growing season we feed about November through mid-April.
Without the humidity things just don't grow as fast or stay as green out west.
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That's pretty much what our hay-feeding season is, or a little longer adding a couple weeks on either end. Here many farmers take a second cut and a few really ambitious ones might squeeze in a third weather permitting. But you probably already know that.
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do you raise any of your own hay?
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Nah, we have pasture and fields but no equipment, and no spare several thousands of dollars to buy machinery. So we pay someone to cut the fields once a year, someone else hays one of our fields in round bales and takes the hay. The quality isn't great overall either so I'm better off buying hay, I get a great deal and can work it off.
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So you have NO idea how silly and excited I feel. I found a 2B pencil in a drawing kit I bought when I was trying start drawing again and what a difference. I can't believe I thought those Neros were graphite! No wonder I lost so much detail and had to rework it so much to get the shading smooth and blended, I can only laugh at myself. But now I am so excited to buy more and draw and see what I can do.
See how naive I am, what would I do without your help?
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I need to find out what kind she was, I'm sure she's a mix but I wonder if she has Chow in her.
Thanks Mike, and for the add!
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