I have just finished working on another portrait. It is a family portrait of a cocker spaniel called Charlie and her owners. Charlie has sadly passed away and her owners wanted a portrait of her and themselves as a keepsake. To put Charlie into focus, we have decided to draw her portrait with tinted pencils and the rest of the portrait in graphite. I think it worked out quite well. Charlie’s reference photo was pretty good so I could really go to town with all the detail. It was such a lovely portrait to work on. The drawing is 25 x 30cm (10 x 12 inches) in size and I will be posting it in a lovely neutral mount. Below, I am posting a scan of the drawing together with some progress pictures for those who are interested in how I got there. For the graphite pencil portrait, I used Staedtler Mars Lumograph pencils (so hard to get in Ireland), and for the tinted portrait of Charlie, I used Faber Castell Polychromas which are just lovely to work with. I used burnt umber, yellow ochre, walnut brown, burnt sienna and venetian red.
