ONLINE ART COURSE – BOSTON TERRIER IN GRAPHITE, AND A HEALTH UPDATE

I am not really a dog person, but I had to admit that I found this picture adorable!

Nice to be back with graphite again, as well. I enjoy this medium. It is a lot less messy than charcoal, although it does smudge quite a bit if you don’t fix it. One thing I have enjoyed very much since starting this course, is having the confidence to use really dark values for the shadow areas. Like many beginner artists, I did not know the importance of this, and the few drawings that I did lacked depth and realism.

The initial layout of the drawing

As usual, I found this to be the most difficult part. I began by using my proportional divider, but soon put this away and followed our teacher Phil instead. He led us through looking at the basic shapes, and the relative distances of the main features from one another.

We used straight lines and it looked pretty blocky to begin with.

Shading the right eye

Phil named the second stage of the project “shading the right eye” but in actual fact it is the dog’s left eye! From our point of view, it is the eye on the right-hand side of the picture. Don’t let’s split hairs, though!

We also added some shading in the side of the face surrounding the eye. There are various creases and folds around the muzzle, and we were also encouraged to look carefully at the different areas of light and shade in the fur. Where it was lighter, we could add carefully placed hatching lines to represent the individual hairs and the direction of the fur.

Here’s a detail shot of the eye.

Shading the left eye

It was only after I’d done the second eye that I realised it was a little too far to the left, and slightly too high. Nothing to be done about it now, though. My hubby said he had a squint!!

Shading the snout

It was fun finishing the nose of this adorable little dog.

Again, I didn’t get the placing exactly right – there was a little bit too much on the right.

The final stage – shading the ears and the paws

There wasn’t quite so much detail in the ears and paws, which focuses one’s eye more on the face which is the focal point of the drawing. The upper edge of the paw on the left was what Phil called a “lost outline.” I did begin to add a little shadow above it, as in the reference photo, but erased it which made it look better. This was also an interesting exercise in foreshortening. At the beginning, Phil said the temptation would be to draw the paw on the right much too small. Our brain tells us what size a dog’s paw should be in relation to its head, but when it is thrust forward like this, we have to rely on what we actually see, and not what we think we see! This is where the initial layout is so crucial.

I have really enjoyed doing this drawing. Graphite is a lovely medium to work with, with its ability to produce soft and subtle shading. The nice soft pencils in the set, like 8B, make for gorgeous dark shadows which really make the image leap into 3-D. I haven’t done any graphite drawing recently, and it was good to get back into it again. Another reason it is nice to do is that it requires very little equipment – just a sketch book, a set of pencils, a pencil sharpener, a couple of erasers and a blending stump. I find this medium as relaxing and fun to do as coloured pencils, and I shall definitely be pursuing this further.

Health update

Anyone who has been following my blog will know that I have now been waiting over 5 1/2 years for my abdominal surgery to repair my complex parastomal hernia. I had been referred to a new surgeon after the original one had left. Earlier this year I had a sigmoidoscopy. I should have had an outpatient appointment after Easter to discuss the way forward.

I have been waiting ever since, and this afternoon I had a call from the surgeon’s secretary. Apparently I was supposed to have been seen in June, but it was delayed. He is on long sick leave and will not be returning to work until next May at the earliest. He has appointed two new surgeons onto the complex hernia repair team, and I would be seeing them now. My outpatient appointment is set for October!! Because there have been so many delays, a new surgeon will probably want further tests done. If I have to have another CT scan, that will mean even more delays. This is the third consultant I will have seen at that hospital. By the time they get around to doing the operation, it will be at least six years since my original referral back in 2018.

This is getting totally ridiculous. I despair of ever getting it done. Exeter has messed me about at practically every stage, and I really wish I could have stayed under the care of my original surgeon at Torbay Hospital. What a mess.