Michelle Wrighton Fine Art and Photography

Although I have a number of pieces on the go at the moment, as an artist I am always looking for ideas and inspiration and take a lot of photos for future reference. I have some wonderful reference photos to choose from the following breeds, so I have decided to find out what breeds of dogs are popular with my visitors and have created a poll for you to tell me which dog breed you would like to see me paint or draw next.

Please vote for your favourite breed or breeds (up to five) from the poll below, which also appears on the right hand column of my blog.

Ihasahotdog.com is always good for a laugh!  Kitty lovers have a look at http://icanhascheezburger.com/

Funny Dog photo

This is the first artwork that I have ever wanted to do more than once – the first one that I did was back in 2006 and it was a tiny ACEO (2.5″ x3.5″ Art Card).  At the time I did think that a larger painting would be worth pursuing, as the reference material (courtesy of Toni-Marie Hudson) is fantastic, and one that a number of artists have attempted in a variety of different mediums.  I did use two slightly different reference photos though, as I thought the slightly different angle of the face would be better for the larger format painting.

I created the ACEO in colour pencils, and this new larger portrait has been done in traditional oils on prepared mdf, to the size of 9″x12″.  The painting is finished, but I won’t be adding it to the FIne Art Gallery until I have varnished it which will get rid of the gloss shine from the dried liquin that you can see in the left corner around my signature.

ACEO Gibbon 2.5"x3.5"

Gibbon in Oils 9"x12"

GIBBON INFORMATION

There are fifteen living species of Gibbon – I believe this one is a White-Handed or Lar Gibbon (Hylobates lar) and as there are many colour variants in the species their subspecies identification is often unreliable unless the provenience of the animal is known.

GIbbons are small tree-dwelling primates whose original natural habitat is the tropical and subtropical rainforests of South, Southeast and East Asia.  Gibbons are yet another endangered animal – some of the 15 species of Gibbon are at the brink of extinction, and are currently only found in small populations in Indonesia, Malaysia, China, Laos, Vietnam, Thailand, Cambodia, Bandladesh, NE India and Myanmar.

The primary reason for the endangered status of GIbbons is the loss of their forest habitat which is being destroyed at the horrific rate of 32 acres per minute.  Unfortuantely, factors such as illegal wildlife trade, poaching and the use of their body parts in the manufacture of traditional medicine have also contributed to the demise of these beautiful creatures.

Gibbons are incredible acrobats and can swing up to 50 ft between trees at speeds up to 35mph, as well as having the dexterity to walk upright on the ground! They are one of the few monogamous primates, living in nuclear families consisting of the mated pair and their dependent offspring living in a family territory that they defend by vigorous vocal and visual displays.  Gibbons are often referred to as the ’songbirds’ of the primate family and they can project their voices up to 2 miles through the rainforest canopy.  The vocal displays of these musical land mammals usually consist of a duet between the mated pair, sometimes with accompaniement from their offspring.

If you would like to help with the plight of the critically endangered Silvery Gibbon, please visit The Silvery Gibbon Project to donate, purchase merchandise or become a member of this conservation organization which is a registered environmental organisation based in Perth, Western Australia.

I forgot that I had a progress photo of Precious on my computer.  Precious’s portrait is being created with a strong contemporary feel to go with her funky and fashionable patent pink colour:)  I have to admit the shine of the patent pink collar is the hardest part to get right.  LOL its not something that I usually paint, but I am sure it will work out in the end.

Sorry about the flash glare on this one, oil paintings are proving as difficult to photograph as graphite!

There is still a fair bit of work to do to get Precious and her patent collar looking perfect, but I won’t be able to work on this until I get a couple of commissions wrapped up.

I have a number of pieces on the go at the moments, this pet portrait of a beautiful German Shepherd dog isn’t finished yet, but I thought I would share the progress photos to give an idea of how this portrait has developed so far. I am working to avoid just duplicating the photograph, I do want the piece to retain a definite hand drawing look, and I am experimenting a bit with ‘painting’ the charcoal rather than drawing as such.

Charcoal on drafting film approx 9″x12″ image size.

Let me know what you think so far!

I am looking for more German Shepherd models for my “Best of Breed Series”, so if you are owned by one or more of these beautiful creatures, there is some additional information   here.

I’m glad to report that the new carpet has been laid and our house is slowly returning to normal – I today I can finally step back inside my studio!

After painting for the last few pieces, I wanted to get my hand back into drawing mode so I started this Rhodesian Ridgeback as a quick experiment see how graphite works on drafting film.  Drafting film is my favourite support for colour pencil work, but I have never tried it for graphite until now (very few artists use it, although I have found one artist who has been using it as a support for thirty odd years).

Photographing it proved very difficult, but I have finally managed to get a semi-reasonable digital image of this one by scanning it, it is still a work in progress, so not yet completed. Film is a really nice surface to work on, and it is more like painting in graphite and charcoal than drawing that is both good and bad, good because it allows very soft transitions of tone, bad because it is easy to lift off and smudge.

I normally only use charcoal for getting my darkest darks in my graphite work, but I found myself leaning more and more towards the charcoal with this one, and whats more, really enjoying ‘painting’ with it using a variety of tools such as chamois, tissue, cotton buds (q-tips), a watercolour brush and a make-up sponge.

Probably the best thing about drafting film though, is the ability to put a different colour paper behind the drawing.  I used a cream parchment paper, and although it dosn’t show properly in the scan (think marbled/mottled cream rather than solid), the effect it gives in real life is really interesting, and something I am looking forward to experimenting a bit more with.

The reference photo was one of my own, and the drawing is approximately A4 in size and when it is finished I will probably offer prints of it at RedBubble.

The first image shows the drawing with the cream backing:

The second image shows the drawing with a white background:

I’d love to know your opinion on my experiment, and if you use drafting film for graphite and charcoal work, or would like a charcoal pet portrait of your own Rhodesian Ridgeback, I’d love to chat;)

The website is slowly coming together, and I am very pleased with how the site is looking so far (plus its very easy to use and maintain, which is always a bonus!)  Better quality images of some of my older artwork, including some of my wearable art (handcrafted sterling silver and gemstone jewelry) has been added to the Fine Art Gallery today.

The front page is linking to the correct pages now, navigation buttons have been added to the top of the page, and a number of different style banners have been added to the LINKS page for reciprocal link exchange (the html code will be added for each shortly for those people like me who don’t know how to make an image link to a website;).

I had planned on re-scanning a few other pieces, but with all the furniture (from the carpet repairs) in my studio, I can only get one foot inside the door, so no art for me today…or for a few more days probably (my hubby is quite ill at the moment, but hopefully will recover without another hospital visit.  So our plans have changed again slightly and we will be taking each hour/day as it comes until he recovers.

Things are progressing along, the Fine Art and Photography gallery have now been added, (but they arn’t linked from the front page yet, and the slideshow isn’t working at this stage).

The links page has been set up and split into different categories so that there are not too many links on each page.  The Commissions, Prints, gifts and merchandise pages are up, as is the original fine art for sale page, but I havn’t been able to add any pieces yet.

It will be a few more days that I first expected to get everything sorted out with the website, unfortunately we had storm damage from a tornado that went through our neighbourhood nearly two weeks ago and we have had to empty the furniture and contents of half of our house into the other half of the house to get the damaged carpet replaced.  As much as I hate doing it, it is a good excuse to de-clutter and get rid of things we no longer use so its going to take longer to get the house re-organised than originally anticipated…great timing of course (not!) as the kids are also on holidays.

I have a number of new oil paintings that I have been working on in between the last few commissions that I have, including some wildlife – a meerkat, a lemur, a snow leopard and a few dogs – a pug, a Rhodesian Ridgeback and a German Shepherd with plans for a German Shorthaired Pointer, a Chinese Crested and a Golden Retriever, as well as a Border Collie agility piece.

At the moment thought, I can’t get into my studio due to the extra furniture that we have had to put in there, so I will post work in progress photos of them when I get the chance.  And at some stage if I ever get the time,  I need to add some back dated posts about a few awards my artwork won in a show I entered in October last year.  I am hoping to finish up all the commissions by August so that I can focus on my own artwork for a while, so I hope there are no more unexpected interruptions in my life!

There is just not enough hours in the day!

Welcome to my new site, please bear with us while my web developer (hubby) gets things organized:)

If you have stumbled across my website during this transition stage, the Art and Photography Galleries will be online in the next few days.  In the meantime, some of my older artwork can be viewed at my old website http://pencilportraits.com.au and over the next few days I hope to finish of and post the old posts that I have sitting in my draft folder!