Morris is a short hair orange tabby, so with this rich chocolate background color, he’ll really convey that kind of “regal” air about him that I picked up in his personality while I studied his photograph.

Here’s Simba’s underpainting – he’s a fluffy orange tabby, the fluff will come out a lot more with the finished piece. For now, I worked in the deepest shades into his fur and worked in his eyes pretty well, though they’ll still get more detail with the second session.

I’ve just finished Badger’s portrait – now mom & dad will get to have a look at a larger photo of the painting and see if there’s any tweaking before it’s “officially” done.

Quite invigorating to paint on cam again – it’s been a few years! Way back when, in the land of LiveJournal, I started watching Jasmine Becket-Griffith paint on cam, and thought it was the coolest thing so I had to go get a webcam and do it myself. I stopped because I had some funky people stalking me (I did it on Yahoo IM then, and would get IM’s during my painting sessions, not very productive)! So now this little do-hickey seems to do the trick, and I’ll be able to paint live without a problem. Yay!

I’ll scan and post details when all is said & done on Badger’s painting. If you tuned in while I was in the studio, thanks for stopping in – and I’d love your feedback on the cam!

Hey all, I’ll be finishing up Badger‘s portrait on cam if you’d like to have a peek see over my shoulder. I’ve tested my studio cam in both Firefox and IE and it appears to be showing up well and has a decent refresh rate. You can find it in my sidebar, top right.

I will try to leave a note in front of the cam if I’m going to be away for any extended period of time, and if I happen to shut it off (or if the puppy chews through my USB extension cables while I’m not looking), it’ll say “offline”.

I hope I turned the volume off, ’cause I’m sure you don’t want to hear me sing.

I’ve just finished Badger’s underpainting. Now, don’t be frightened – I know it looks muddy and kinda blech right now, this will all be refined in the next stage, which is the addition of layers and layers of fur. She looks a bit flat, and a bit dark, and her eyes are not as glassy as they will be when I complete the portrait.

She is beauuutiful. I love Huskies, always have. When they are so well taken care of, like this one very obviously is, they are the most wonderful dogs. They love to please their parents and I’ve seen them become very sad and troubled when they go ignored. Very emotional creatures – and stunning, to boot.

I have tossed around the idea of painting on webcam again, especially since I’m working on so many portraits at the moment. I’ll definitely let you know if I decide to do that and give you a link so you can pop in and watch me painting live in my studio.

Yesterday I decided to just snap photos of Claire’s portrait as I progressed and show you all of the stages I go through during a drawing session. If you’re looking for a tutorial on how to draw a portrait, I’m not sure that I am a very good teacher – but if you pick up more on visual cues, you’ll be good to go.

My supplies are very simple – an Ebony extra smooth drawing pencil, a set of Kimberly drawing pencils (a nice variety of hard and soft leads for shading and defined lines), a white block eraser, a kneaded eraser, sharpener, acid free archival drawing paper and a sock, so you don’t get yourself too messy during the process.

I started out measuring and marking the size, 4″ x 6″ on my pad, and worked in the line drawing:

Back in the beginning of 2005, Karen came to me about her baby girl, Maddie, who passed over the rainbow bridge. I remember painting Maddie like it was yesterday – how she tugged on my heartstrings then, and how compassionate and loving I thought her Momma was to have her portrait done. Over the years, I’ve painted all of Karen’s pets and they have definitely all touched my heart and become an extended furbaby family to me. I think about her and her babies regularly, so it was very sad to hear that Callie had passed away.

Part of me was so torn yesterday when I started contemplating her background color. I wanted to paint her face on a cloud with a sky blue background, like Maddie. But I kept being pulled away from that thought and my mind filled with this gold color, a rich warm gold like sunshine was filling the canvas around her. That’s just how it happened, too.