A week away

So a weekend away ended up with me being away for over a week. Luckily I had my trusty sketchbook to hand and boy did I make the most of it.

I have a large commission of a sandscape as I call it and spent a few days studying pebbles, shells and layouts. The end piece is going to be a large panoramic acrylic painting using some textures and mediums.
I've never taken on something so large and the subject is also very different to my normal work. This should terrify me yet I'm actually left feeling excited about it and can't wait to get going on the final piece.

Shell and pebble studies.

This week I plan to use some of the mini canvases I have laying around to practice some pebble and shell paintings before actually going out and getting my paws on the large piece of wood that will become the end piece.

One night I spent a bit of time doing two small pieces.

Wolf in graphitint and magpie in graphite and coloured pencils.

I spent the rest of the week doing memory sketches of animals, mostly focussing on colourful birds now that I have a good set of coloured pencils.

Memory sketches are something I've practiced by spending hours studying images before going away and sketching the images or similar from memory. Mostly these do not look like the original images as they are from memory. This practice gives the memory a work out and trains your eyes to take in details that you may normally miss.

It seems obvious that I have a liking for crested birds...

Another day Some character sketches turned up. Sometimes when I get a block wolves appear out of nowhere... they also tend to have interesting scars.

And of course the sleeping animal project continued with some interesting doodles I'm hoping to turn in to more interesting and pleasing images. Animals featured include cats, dogs, otters and rodents.

The rounder animals are probably the shapes I'm going to work with. The rats and gerbils will probably feature most as I do have a soft spot for them and...

I do have a non art related thing I want to include as he will no doubt inspire artwork over the next few weeks. 

I adopted a 16 week old gerbil today who is now named Flynn. He's a gorgeous little guy who I plan to have fun with. I have images of paw prints in paint and pencils being chewed...