How I drew the Buff Orpinton for the give-away

When Kate over at Farmhouse38 sent me the picture of her Clementine above (inserted), what I immediately liked about is was the awesome pin light around her as she was photographed against the sun. I love the glow it brings to her comb. I also love that her tail feathers are so shiny and bright.



I started out by placing her on the drawing with some approximate circles like this.



Then, using very light pencil strokes, I drew the outline and erased the circles.



This is my drawing kit. The gray blob is a kneadable eraser. Probably one of my most favorite finds of 2011. An eraser you can mold into any shape you want? Awesome! The white pencil-looking thing is a smudge pen - I am pretty sure I am using the technical term here. It's made of cardboard, rolled up and sharpened and/or cleaned with the sand-paper-strips-on-a-stick you see at the top.

Sand paper on a stick. Awesome!

The other pencils are charcoal pencils. These are the kind you can use for charcoal portraits such as this one I made of B.





Here I am re checking all the dimensions from a different angle. The rest of the chicken was drawn on the table, but after a while you can't "see" it anymore, so a change of scenery helps. Also turning it upside down is great for this which I learned in art class that I took with B. You can see all his artwork here.

Here is one of my favorites that he made:





Here you can see the photo and my drawing side by side.



Next I pulled out my pastels. They are still brand new looking because all my other drawings (except for the pink flower that I use in my blog banner) were made in class using their pastels. I broke all of these in half as I was using them.



This is after my first pass of colors. I did this while sitting in on a class that B took on Python programming.



And here is the finished piece with even more shading and highlights.

This one I sent off to have printed for the give-away and I just love how that turned out. The print has a subtle linen texture and looks like this against the light.





And here is the print straight from the front.

There is still time to enter the give-away. Today is the last day. Enter here: Buff up your Farmhouse style - a joint give-away by Farmhouse38 and ShiftCtrlART

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