Day 6 - A baby commission

Baby Sisters (conte and pastel pencil, 8x10 inches, from client photo)

Day 6 of my 31-in-31 for January.

Pressed for time today so here's a commission for last month. Cute little baby sisters, 10 months apart!

See more of my pencil portraits at RitaKirkmanDrawings.com
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Day 5 - Pai

"Pai" (pastel, 7x5 inches) click here to bid or buy

Day 5 of my 31-in-31 for January!

This is another that I under-painted with Art Spectrum primers and ink, see yesterday's post for more about that.

This is Pai, because that's what her tag said! :)

Here are some progress pics of Pai's portrait:

And here's my newly cleaned workstation for the new decade, all ready to get dirty tomorrow!

Day 4 - Chewy

"Chewy" (pastel, 8x8 inches) click here to bid or buy

Day 4 of my 31-in-31 for the first month of this new decade!

I pasteled this one of three under-paintings I had made with Art Spectrum primers and inks, in preparation for my workshop trip to Australia later this year. (I've made all of my supply lists for the Australia workshops strong on the Art Spectrum brand to make it easier for students to purchase!)

Art Spectrum has some new pigment-based inks and the golden ochre color is a very nice substitute for the Golden brand fluid acrylic color I had been using. I'm mixing it with the Art Spectrum clear pastel primer, and I'm still experimenting a bit, but it's been working out rather well so far!

I find that it takes a lot more of the colored ink in the clear primer to make a strong enough color for my usual layering (more than the Golden acrylic color) so I'm mixing smaller batches til I get it right. Then because I'm using more ink, the mix is thinner than I'm used to but one good side effect of that is it doesn't dry up so fast! But I did notice that it didn't seem to hold quite the same amount of pastel over the areas that were just the gold mix, so I might need to add more clear on top before pasteling. I'll experiment more with the next batch.

Here's my gold layers of the underpainting. It took about 4 layers in all:

 Here's the finished underpainting with the Art Spectrum primers and ink used:

Day 3 - Puppy portrait commission

A cute puppy (conte and pastel pencil, 10x8 inches, from client photo) sold

Day 3 of my 31-in-31 of January.

Took care of a bunch of paperwork today so I'm posting one of my favorite puppy portraits from the Christmas season.

See more of my pencil portraits at RitaKirkmanDrawings.com.

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Day 2 - Young Mewler at the Window

"Young Mewler at the Window" (pastel, 12x6 inches) $425 framed. Buy here.

Day 2 of my 31-in-31 in January.

Another cute pic of our Mewler when he was a kitten. He doesn't wear a collar anymore because his half-brother Argie never could tolerate one, and so to be fair, both are very happy to go without.

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A portrait commission and a New Goal for a New Year

"Bible Study" (16x12, conte and pastel pencils, from client photo) sold

Well, another year is gone and a new year begins again.

I was thrown off my usual rhythm in November when my schedule had me in Montreal for a workshop and various other things kept me away from doing my annual 30-in-30 November challenge. Then I was largely offline most of December, immersed in portrait commissions at a Holiday craft show that I've been doing for decades.

It's strange and powerful this hold that the creative urge has over an artist. It's too easy to let it all slide and get caught up in other daily routines, errands, paperwork, dinner chores, and then another day is gone and nothing new has been created. But the urge is still there, like a craving.

Commission work is wonderful and is awesome for paying the bills, but when 99% of it is from client photos, it's not creation, it's copywork. It takes skill, yes, and occasionally one gets to copy a lovely image with exciting light and a decent composition, like the one above, but what the client still wants in the end is an accurate copy of their photo.

After a month of commissions (and more yet on my schedule) I'm dying to dive back into my own ideas. The distractions and excuses are still loud: my database broke, the paperwork is overflowing, one of my hard drives is glitching, and the master closet is scary. But I have decided that the only way I'll be able to really get back to work is to tell someone I'm going to do it! (Because I'm a woman of my word.)

So here it is: I'm going to jump start my 2020 with a 31-in-31 month of posts!

Fine print: I will be using the Leslie Saeta set of rules for my 31-in-31, so if I don't paint a new painting every day, I'll be able to fill in with some of the portraits I did last month (starting with this one.) But I will be posting something that has not been posted before, every day this month!

Thanks for following along with my journey, stay tuned for more, and let me know what you think!

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PS: see more Detailed Pencil Portraits on my drawings site RitaKirkmanDrawings.com.

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