Just a short post today. I have been faffing (technical term) with my website – updating the galleries with some of my recent works.
Here’s a preview of what you can find there:
Right I’m off to do more work on ‘Her Majesty, Queen Amber’. More updates to follow.
Jilly
Well one of them was strange..
My sister-in-law had the last of her hand operations on Wednesday and I took her to the hospital. Those of you who have ever experienced this will know that it involves a lot of waiting around, not least of all while the patient is in surgery. So it was rude not to take my work with me…
There was I sitting in the plastic surgery unit with William; the lighting was fantastic and I made lots of progress!
Today we are with some great friends at their beautiful home which they have re-developed. John is in his element doing a photo-shoot and I have had a wonderful relaxing afternoon drinking wine, catching up and putting the finishing touches to William.
Have a look at the results here…
Next time…
…starting an oil piece ‘Her majesty, Queen Amber’ and developing the sketch for a Christmas card for the Haworth Cast rescue organisation.
Jilly
x
Here’s a quick update of progress with William…
You can see from the gallery that I’ve got to the first level of detail on the second image. Once I’ve finished the third image I will add more detail to the whole picture and the final tweaks of contrast.
Hopefully we will have a finished piece by the end of the week!
Jilly
x
This weekend I had the pleasure of a Vic Bearcroft tuition day.
There were 18 of us in total in a little village hall in Tollerton, Nottinghamshire – a small but perfectly formed group.
My reason for booking this day is that I wanted to ‘loosen up’ a little. Plus I’m thinking of offering tuition myself and it was a good opportunity to check out the competition 
Being a qualified trainer I firmly believe in continual learning. No matter how long you’ve been at something there is always something new to learn and this weekend was no exception.
Our goal was to work on a portrait of Mephisto, a beautiful Cheetah from the Wildlife Heritage Foundation in Kent.
Vic ran through the tradional basics of defining shape and form through tone, before moving on to underpainting, strengthening the colour, adding the detail and finally adjusting the contrast to finish the picture.
All in all it was a great day and I met some lovely friendly people.
The gallery below give you an idea of what we got up to:
The piece was created on velour, which is my favourite medium – particularly for fur. There are still many layers to go before the piece is completed, but I will eventually get to it. William the Bengal kitten is my priority at the moment as he is my current commission, then I have one more piece to create for my penultimate college assignment. More on that after William is completed, so watch this space…
Jilly
Well not quite….
Apologies if you’ve been following my blog and have wondered where it disappeared to over the last few days. The answer is “I have no idea”!!!
It’s extremely annoying, but I lost the entire thing and couldn’t log in.
Anyway after some technical jiggery pokery I’m back.
The last couple of blogs have been following my latest commission – William, a cheeky little bengal kitten with a big personality.
To remind you of where I’m at with this take a look at the gallery here. Click on any image to enlarge and then hover over the left or right-hand side to move forwards or backwards:
Hope you enjoy the recap. I will update the gallery software when I have more time.
There will be more to come on William later this week.
Watch out for the post about my recent Vic Bearcroft tuition experience.
See you soon
Jilly
x
Happy New Year to all of you!
I have decided to change my blogging software, therefore my blog has moved.
Click here to see the new and updated version:
http://jilltisbury.co.uk/wordpress/
See you on the other side
Jilly
xx
This year seems to be passing by in a sort of mini whirlwind!
….and it’s nearly Christmas!
Well this last month has been one of tying up loose ends.
First of all John and I sat our final ever OU exam on 15th October and then spent the weekend away celebrating the end of 6 years of study!
Actually we went to Hunstanton and spent much of the time catching crabs off Cromer pier – what a laugh, it’s you’ve never been crabbing I can highly recommend it.
So then I got the taste for finishing things…..
First you might recall the Mandarin ducks that I started at the beginning ofthe Summer – well here’s the finished piece.
Here are the final few WIP staps for Sophie:
I decided to add a blueish background to pop out the fur colour:
I chose a sort of air force blue as a complementary of the rust colours in her fur.
I am still loving this Fisher 400 paper, so nice to work on.
My latest commission is this lovely little King Charles Spaniel called Sophie. I met Sophie and her “mum”, Sally, at the Just Dogs Live show in Peterborough.
Sally sent me this wonderful reference shot from a photo shoot she had done with Sophie at Lovell Design.
Reference shots like these are reasonably rare, so it’s nice to have so much detail to base the piece on.
The lighting on this is not the best as the paper is a very light sand colour.
In the close up you might just be able to see the lighter areas in the iris of the eyes, which are important to add depth and shape. I have worked over the base colours with graphite or dark brown for the shadows and darks, sepia, ochre and madder brown for the midtones and flesh & cream for the highlights.
Here I’ve used a base coat of flesh and ochre over the ears before working over it with the detail of the curls. The last image, below, is where I’m at so far. I’ve just started to add the detail in on the left-hand ear.
Crikey is it really a sign of getting old or are the months passing so quickly because as ever I have so much to do?
I have FINISHED my last assignment!! Yeay. That’s a culmination of 6 years hard study – just a 3 hour exam on 15th October and that is my degree course finished. I have to say although it’s been a hard slog it has very much been worth it. So that’s the work stuff over with now I’m going to start the fine art degree that I’ve always wanted to do!!Artwork
Then my email went nuts…
After a little bit of jiggery pokery I managed to lighten the darker areas to try and see some of the detail to add to the piece. Unfortunately it’s not easy to see enough detail when the photos are contrasty so Photoshop can be a real help in getting the reference data that you need.
Here I’ve started on the outline. I’m working on Fisher paper usig derwent pastels. Although I find it easer to do the outline in sketching pencils – white, black and tan.
Once I have the basic shapes I can move on to blocking in some colour. I start with the Black & White Spaniel – Jilly. Having laid down the base colour I can then add a little detail with the light grey.
This next image was taken with better lighting conditions, so you gt a better feel for the colour. I have started to add base colour to Connie now. As I work on each dog I add more detail into the background. You can see that the basic grass tones are starting to build up now.
In this next image you can see that the detail in the grass is beginning to build and form a very solid foundation. I love the light and dark areas and the looks on the dogs faces they are realy alert in these images. Here I’ve started work on Jake who has a slightly lighter coat which is catching the light very nicely.
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