Merry Christmas to all

A Merry Christmas to each and every one of you.Thankyou to all for your generous comments and just for looking this past year.I hope you all have a peaceful Christmas wherever you may be.

Serval kitten drawing complete

Serval kitten  50cm x 30.5cm graphite and carbon pencils on paper

Sales at London International Horse show,Olympia

This weekend is the last opportunity to view a selection of my original works and limited edition prints on stand N26 the Collier and Dobson ltd fine art publisher stand.The show has run from 16th-22nd December and this year has been a very successful show for me with all three of the above images selling thus far as well as lots of prints including my latest release 'Watching' my African leopard portrait.I would like to take this opportunity to wish you all a very merry Christmas and hope that you will all join me here on my blog in 2014.

Serval kitten drawing almost complete

Progress with this drawing has been a little slow but luckily I have the festive season to blame for the many distractions over the last couple of weeks.suffice to say that i'll be very happy to have this finished before Christmas.

Serval kitten drawing update

here's a quick update on progress with my latest drawing of a serval kitten.This drawing once again pairs conte pierre noire pencils for the darkest tones with my usual derwent graphic pencils for the rest of the piece.the cats head is taking shape now with some areas complete including fur details whilst other areas you can clearly see are in the process of the graphite being layered to build up the required strength of tone before the details are added.

Another cat drawing

Ive made a start on another cat drawing,this time its a serval kitten.the background toning has been completed using layers of graphite working from an H grade pencil thru to a 2B and next i'll make a start on the cat itself.the edge of the image needs breaking up by erasing fine hairs into the background toning and the spots need to be completed before I start(as usual with cats) on completing the ears.ive had to put oils to one side for a short while as I complete a series of pencil drawings for publication by my publishers Collier and Dobson early in the new year.the first two of which will be 'Watching' my African leopard study and 'Snow prince' my snow leopard cub drawing.Alongside the pencil drawings being published by my publishers I will be self-publishing a select few of my more specialised pencil drawings in small editions of 50 hand signed and numbered prints which will be exclusively available from my website www.clivemeredithart.weebly.com  in the near future.i'll keep you posted here on my blog once they are available.

Snow leopard cub drawing complete

After several days work on the body fur of this young cat i'm calling the drawing complete.the completed image measures 13.75" x 17" and will shortly be winging its way to the publishing house for scanning.This piece has been a little experimental for me as ive been trying out several different types of pencil in combination to see if anything can be 'added' to my imagery by incorporating one or more different pencils.apart from my usual derwent graphic graphite pencils ive also used wolfs carbon pencils and my latest addition the conte pierre noire pencil.both the carbon pencil and pierre noire produce very deep,matt blacks ,and after initial scepticism about the sheer 'blackness' of them compared to graphite ive decided I rather like them when combined with the graphite,i think it adds another dimension to the work.i think I will find more of a use for the conte's than the carbon pencils as they have several advantages over them whilst giving very similar results.The major disadvantage I found with the carbon pencils is that they cannot be used over graphite meaning that they had to be used very precisely to avoid problems,i also didn't particularly like the feel of the pencil when applying to paper whereas the conte's can be used over and combined with graphite very successfully and I found that suited my purposes better.i hope you've enjoyed watching this latest pencil drawing coming together.limited edition prints will be available in due course on my website www.clivemeredithart.weebly.com