Is it a gaggle of goslings?

Goslings wip,
I really enjoyed getting back to the extra soft pastels, so have decided to stick with them at present. This is a soft pastel painting on A3 pastelmat paper.
I stumbled across these cute goslings back in the Spring up at Richmond park. It was getting late in the day, and they were settling down for the night, snuggling up to their Mum under a tree. The soft pastels I hope will be perfect to create the soft downy feathers of the goslings. I've used a couple of photos to get this composition together, and have spent an hour today roughly blocking in some colour.

Antarctic seal, finished

Well here she is! Must say I've enjoyed this one. Beautiful colours gorgeous textures, thanks Mum and Dad for supplying me with a great photo. One day I would love to get to the Antarctic too, in the mean time I've all my parents photos to paint!

Seal wip day3

I've started to work in stronger tones today, lots of blues and greys. I need to reshape the top of her nose, I hadn't notice it was out until I loaded the photo on blogger. Photos are a great tool to enable you to spot mistakes! Not too sure what to do with the background. I was going to hint the sea, but now I'm thinking a darker tone, I quite like the warmth of the brown. The pebbles that he'll eventually lie on have lots of warm tones, as well as greys.

Seal wip, day 2

I'm really enjoying this, playing with different colours in the fur to create the sheen on it. The pastels that I'm using for this are so soft you can almost move them around the paper, you can certainly mix colours on the paper as if you're using a palette for paint.

I feel sometimes I get overally bogged down in the details, the soft pastels are great, its just not possible to get too fussy with them. You can get a sharp edge on them but it doesn't last very long.

Off to the Antarctic

Wish I literally was, the heat this Summer is starting to melt my brains! My parents a few years back went there, and took some lovely photos. It lovely to use a photo that wasn't taken in a zoo, but in the seal's natural habitat. Their eyes are reflective like a pair of mirror sunglasses, you can see the surrounding landscape perfectly reflected in them. There is ice in the seals nostrils where it's breath has frozen, you can feel the cold.

I've started this with bold loose blocks of colour using a very soft pastel on pastelmat paper(A3). There are some fantastic textures the smoothness of the sleek seal's fur, contrasting with the pebbles it's laying on. It's great to be working looser again!

Chica, Pip and Sally are done!

I've finished, at last! This was a bit of a challenge! The photos could be better and bigger. Today I needed to decide how to link the dogs together. I didn't want to try to make them appear that they were in the same scene. The angles and lights are just too different. I did however want them to connect. I had a brainwave ( very rare! ) and decided to put a cushion with Chica the chihuahua. The cushion has included colours from all three dog portraiture's. Green from the grass in Pip, rust and blue from Sally and purple from Chica. Now to check that the person that asked me to do the commission is happy.........!

Been tweeking Pip, and getting on with Sally....

Well as said above, I've been tweeking, I really didn't like Pip's hind leg ( 2nd dog). I decided to change the pose slightly to soften the edges. I have worked into Sallys fur today worked on all the details. The lump between her front legs will be a ball. I need to decide on her background at the moment I'm thinking of graduating a tonal colour. The chihuahua I think I will hint the details of the sofa, most the photos I have she's on it, so I think it's was a typical pose!

I haven't really mentioned any technical arty stuff yet. I'm working initially with very soft pastel using pastelmat paper, then working into them with pastel pencils. Then to get strong final highlights I'm using soft pastels sharpened to a point.