I usually write articles with advice and inspiration for people wanting to make a living from their creativity, but this week I posted the first of my art instruction articles, Top 3 Tips For Learning to See Like an Artist.

If you’re an aspiring artist, I’d love it if you’d read that post and let me know if you find it useful. I’m planning to develop a complete art course, and these posts will help me decide what people need the most help with.

Cheap Drawing Advice

If you can’t wait for the course, I’m currently experimenting with offering different forms of art instruction, and for a short time, you can get a drawing or painting critique from me for just $5.

If you send me a drawing or painting you have done, along with the reference photo, I will give you my feedback on your work, with a list of areas you need to work on, and I will even draw/paint over the top of your work to demonstrate my suggestions.

Check out the gig on Fiverr for more details, and let me know if you have any questions about it.

So I am now offering this beautiful charcoal style portrait for just £25 for one pet. (Additional animals are £15 each). The portraits are still digitally hand-painted, but the brushes I use give it a fantastic sketchy look.

Charcoal Style Pet Portrait

This is Tilly, my friend’s cat. She’s about a year old, and she’s just started to venture into the great outdoors.

She escaped about 6 months ago and came back with a broken leg after getting in a fight with the neighbour’s dog. The leg healed well, but she’s understandably a bit nervous about going exploring again!

To get your own charcoal style pet portrait, just take a look at my pet portraits page, and follow the ‘Get Started’ link to send me your photos.

The price probably won’t be this low for ever, so get one quick, while they’re cheap.

And remember, 10% of all pet portrait proceeds will go to animal charities.

I’ve decided I’d like to give something back to the animals that help me earn a living, so from today, I will be donating 10% of all proceeds from my pet portraits to animal charities.

For dog and cat portraits, the money will go to Battersea Dogs and Cats home, who do great work caring for dogs and cats in need of help, reuniting them with their owners, and finding them new homes.

For horse portraits, I will donate to Redwings Horse Sanctuary, who provide welfare and rehabilitation for over 1,100 horses, ponies, donkeys and mules every day.

And for any other animals, I will donate the money to the animal charity of your choice, or to the RSPCA.

Donations will be made at the end of each month.

This is just my small way of giving something back. It’s nice to think that the work I do can go towards helping animals in need, as well as celebrating those that are already well cared for.

To order a pet portrait, look at the examples on this page, choose the style you like, and get in touch.

I got in touch and asked what kind of thing they were looking for. She said anything really, but if it is along the lines of ‘tattoo art’ then so much the better.

So I decided to create some custom paintings with a tattoo theme to them. Here is the first one (click to enlarge):

The Chinese characters say 'hope'

I’m going to do a few more along these lines and I’ll post them here when they’re done.

Let me know what you think in the comments below.

I also posted recently over on Right Brain Rockstar about how I intend to develop some form of online art course this year.

If that’s something you’d be interested in, check out that post and leave a comment, or join the mailing list to stay informed of any developments.

One thing that I’ve found most difficult to find at a reasonable price is plaster casts, which are commonly used in art ateliers for drawing practice.

Example of a drawing cast

The course I’m doing lists several sources of plaster casts, but since it’s based in America, most of the sources are US based, and the cost of shipping a heavy across the Atlantic can almost double the cost of some casts.

I spent a long time on Google scouring the UK for any suppliers who might be able to provide me with a plaster cast for a reasonable price. I only found three suppliers based in the UK, but there is a German supplier who is very reasonable, and there are some online alternatives which you might consider.

Here’s my roundup of the suppliers I found, as well as the American ones, which you may consider if you have the budget for it.

Plaster Cast Suppliers

UK

London Atelier of Representational Art (LARA) – LARA have a variety of different sized casts, busts and reliefs, ranging from £45 for facial features to £195 for full torso casts. The casts are not listed on their website, but I emailed the school and they sent me photos of what they had available, and they look like they are great quality.

Lavender Hill Studios – Lavender Hill have a large selection on their website, but when I emailed, they only had five available, ranging from £120 to £285, and the quality of the casts didn’t look as good as the ones from LARA. Worth emailing for details though.

Plaster Cast Interiors – There’s a wide range of weird and wonderful plaster casts available here. Not so many classical art type casts, but you might find something suitable and the prices are very reasonable. Make sure you order the plain white finish.

Europe

Cast-Drawing.com – Based in Germany, this is where I ordered my first cast from, due to the very low price. They also sell Nitram charcoal, which is supposedly one of the best kinds you can get, and it’s also very reasonable. Casts range from just 7 Euros to 23 Euros. The female torso doesn’t look amazing, but it would definitely work for cast drawing practice.

USA

There’s a lot more to choose from in the US, you just need to watch out for the shipping costs.

Giust Gallery – These are great quality casts, and a great selection, where you can pay anything from $15 to over $4000, depending on your needs.

Philippe Faraut – These are also very nice casts, although the selection is more limited. I intend to buy either the male or female torso at some point, although the shipping cost is almost as much as the casts themselves.

Statue.com – A wide selection here at a variety of price points.

Utrecht – A small selection here, but what they do have looks like good quality and the prices are reasonable.

Fine Art Store – Another alternative, with some reasonably priced casts.

Online Alternatives

If you’re on a really tight budget and can’t afford any of the casts from these suppliers, you might want to look into online photo references.

This is definitely not ideal, as photos can’t portray the subtleties of real life, and some information will be lost, but if this is all you can afford, then it’s better than nothing.

Online Life Drawing now has cast drawing reference images, which you can view from all angles, giving you many different poses to draw from. A 2-day pass is just $5, but currently the cast drawing selection seems limited. Might be worth emailing them to see what they have available.

EnsoMobile is an iPhone app which also features 360 degree plaster cast images. The apps are only $0.99 each, so this is a very affordable option.

Learning Cast Drawing

If you want to learn how to do cast drawing, there is a great book called Cast Drawing Using the Sight-Size Approach, which has been a big help to me.

I hope this has been of some use in your search for drawing casts. If you know of any other good sources which I have missed, especially in the UK, please let us know about it in the comments below.

I would love to offer them cheaper, but for the amount of time it takes to paint a highly detailed portrait, I just couldn’t afford to lower the price.

However, I want to make these pet portraits affordable for more people, so I have been working on a new, less detailed painting style, which I can complete much faster, but still results in a beautiful painting.

The ‘alla prima’ style portrait is much looser and more painterly, with visible brushstrokes, giving it more of a traditionally painted look, which a lot of people will prefer. Here’s an example of the alla prima style:

Alla Prima Style

As you can see, from a distance, the painting still looks pretty realistic, but if you click on the image to enlarge it, you will see where the brushwork has been left more loose, rather than being brought to a detailed finish.

These alla prima style pet portraits are now available for much less than the more detailed ones, and that includes a photo quality print. For price details and printing options, check out the pet portraits page.

I’d love to know what you think of this new style. Do you prefer the more painterly appearance, or do you like the fine details? Let me know in the comments below.

Completed Bargue Drawing

I could continue to work on this drawing, capturing more of the subtleties, but for the purposes of studying proportion, value and relationships, there’s no need to take it any further.

The Value of Master Copy Drawings

I recently posted over at Right Brain Rockstar about the role of master copy drawings in artistic training. Copying the work of great artists gives us a valuable insight into the way they worked and by using the same techniques as they used, we can build a solid foundation of skills that we will utilise in the rest of our artistic careers.

The Method

The Bargue drawing (named after the artists, Charles Bargue, whose drawings we are copying), is completed using the sight-size approach. This means that we make our drawing the exact same size as the reference picture, so that we can accurately check our measurements without having to scale them up or down.

In this method we set up our drawing board with the reference picture on the left, and a blank sheet of paper on the right. A piece of thread is taped down the centre of the reference picture, and a corresponding line is drawn lightly on the blank paper. Then marks are made to indicate the top and bottom of the drawing.

Blocking In

The first stage after setup is to very roughly block in the outline of the drawing. The purpose of this stage is to get an accurate framework for the large structure of the drawing.

(Note: I have increased the contrast of the drawing in these initial stages, so you can clearly see the pencil lines, as they are very light in reality.)

Blocking in a Bargue Drawing

There is no detail at this point. All the features of the face are simplified into large angular shapes. We draw a line, then use a piece of thread to measure it against the reference. If it is out, we draw the line where it should be, erase the original line, and measure again.

This process is repeated until the whole drawing is blocked in accurately. It is worth spending a long time on this stage to ensure our proportions, angles and relationships are all correct before proceeding. This will save us a lot of time later.

Refining the Block-In

The next stage is to refine the block-in with more detail.

Refining the Block-in

We go around the whole drawing, adding more detail, but still keeping things angular and simplified. Don’t be tempted to start drawing detailed curves or shading at this stage.

We are still constantly checking our measurements to ensure an accurate drawing, but we always measure with the eye first, and only then check with the thread. This helps train the eye to measure more accurately.

Adding Tone

Once we have a fairly detailed and accurate block-in, we can add a layer of consistent tone to the shadow areas.

Adding Tone to the Bargue Drawing

This stage adds some depth to the drawing, and makes it easier to see any drawing errors we may have made in the previous stages.

Spend plenty of time on this stage, making the tone consistent and smooth. This will give us a good basis for finishing off the drawing in the final stage.

Finishing the Drawing

The final stage involves accurately matching value relationships, and refining the edges between the light and shadow areas.

Finishing the Bargue Drawing

This stage can take a very long time, so we need to exercise patience and make sure we spend the time getting everything just right.

Value Relationships

One thing I learned from this Bargue drawing is the importance of capturing accurate value relationships, as opposed to exact value matching.

Depending on what medium you use, you may not be able to match the values in your drawing exactly. For example, I used an HB pencil for the drawing above, which cannot match the darkest darks in the reference picture.

But we can still get an accurate drawing provided we match the value relationships. So even if the darkest dark in our drawing is a fair bit lighter than the reference, as long as its relationship to the surrounding values is consistent, then the drawing will still work.

So if your darkest dark is lighter than the reference, then all your other values will need to be lightened accordingly, so that the relationship between all of the values is consistent.

Next steps

My next assignment in the course is another Bargue drawing, and I’m also currently working on a self-portrait and finishing off my oil painting colour charts. I’ll share finished assignments here, but if you want to see the stages as I complete them, you can follow me on Facebook, where I will post more regular updates.

If you have any questions about the Bargue drawing process, please let me know in the comments below.

Now that I’m a full-time artist, I am once again taking commissions for pet portraits. Here are a couple of samples (Click to enlarge):

Joss

Jet and Socks

And here’s a video I made to show you how they are painted:

And here’s some feedback I received from happy customers:

“Dan has captured my dogs perfectly.” ~ Anna

“We asked Dan to paint Alfie (our Springer Spaniel) and only a week after sending a handful of photos for reference, we received the most incredible painting. We were blown away! The painting will take pride of place in our living room from now on.” ~ Chris

You can see more examples and details of the process on my Pet Portraits page.

On that page it says that I don’t offer printing, but I am currently reviewing a printing service, and if I like the results then I will be able to get the pet portraits printed for you too, so if you’re interested, get in touch and we’ll sort something out.

I was one of the lucky ones, and last week I received my incredible caricature. One of the reference photos I had sent Mike also had my girlfriend in it, and he had kindly done a caricature of her too! Here they are:

Those who know us will know how perfectly Mike has captured us in these pictures. He seems to have an uncanny knack for expressing the essence of a person’s character in a very simple style, which I guess is what makes him such a good character designer.

We’ve had loads of people asking us where we got these, and referred them all to Mike’s website. If you want to get one of your own, check out www.mikegiblinillustration.com

Right Brain Rockstar is Live

In other news, my new blog that I mentioned in my last post is launching tomorrow, but I’ve opened early for advanced viewing, so you can head over now to Right Brain Rockstar, and please leave a comment to let me know what you think.

For a long time I have been wanting to do some formal art training, and I’ve become very interested in the classical atelier approach to art instruction. This involves learning to draw and paint through a series of projects including bargue drawings, cast drawings, master copies, and finally full colour paintings.

I had considered enrolling at an actual atelier, but a bit of research turned up only two atelier schools in the UK, both of which are in London. I toyed with the idea of spending a year studying in London, but soon decided against it due to the expense, the upheaval, and the commitments I have here in Sheffield.

So I needed another option. I have taken an online art course before, Jason Seiler’s Art of Caricature at Schoolism.com, and I was very impressed with the way it worked, so I figured maybe I could do something similar again.

A bit more research landed me at Jonathan’s site. I checked out his paintings, watched some of his YouTube videos, and was sold. I’ve been in touch with him, and I will be starting on Monday!

I will be posting images here of all the projects I complete along with my thoughts on the learning process. I hope those will be of some interest.

More Exciting News!

What, more?! Yes. I have spent the last few weeks working on a new blog called Right Brain Rockstar. The site will be a source of information and inspiration for anyone who would like to make a living out of their creative talent.

I have long since wanted to do art full-time, but until recently I’ve never had the motivation that’s required to do something about it.

Now I am working toward that goal, and my new blog will document my journey, and hopefully inspire other people to join me in my quest to make creativity my day job!

The blog is scheduled to launch on Monday 28th November, but you can go there now and join me on Twitter or Facebook, or join the mailing list, and you will be the first to know when the site goes live. Let me know what you think of the idea in the comments below.

I will continue to use this blog to talk about my art, speaking of which, here’s a video of a figure drawing I did a while back. This was originally published on an art tutorial site I started, but I’ve decided to abandon that and any tutorials or demonstration videos I make will be published here from now on. Enjoy!