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Well here is Bear's progress for this week.  it is getting closer to having all the base in, only about the ear is left, but then it will be reworking to get the color gradiations and a lot more of the hair work on the snout.  Should be another weeks work of effort and then I'll be satisfied. Hope everyone has been busy.

Well here is the culmination of this weekend's work on Bear.  He is still taking his dear sweet time coming on the paper, but at least he is beginning to take shape - could at least eat or drink something now that he has a mouth with big teeth.  Still quite a bit of work to go and then a fair amount of tweaking on his coat.  I still keep fussing over several sections on his face, erase redo, but like the way his left (really his right) shoulder came out with the variations in the coat texture.  Now that I have more graphite on the page his eyes don't look too bad and I really like the difference between the color and black and white.  Of course that might be because he would normally be mostly black anyway.  He is turning into a handsome boy, not like the boy below. I framed up Rosco and that Boxer boy is going to go to the office with me and keep me company until I replace him with the next love of my life (we won't share that with Paul)....

Well my friend Bear is not coming out on the paper quickly - he is just taking his time.  I always thought he was laughing and think he is laughing at me as he knew the joke was that he knew he'd take a lot of time. However he is teaching me a lot (and again by posting I see things I don't usually just looking at the easel - interesting). He has a short hair coat and it's really glossy,reflects a lot of light giving me many shades of grey which I need to try to immulate.  Still am using basically only two pencils 2B and 4B.  Will put him at my chair or since it's BEAUTIFUL outside to the porch and he will go faster than sitting on the easel.  It's 60 this morning and we are now well on our way to summer as we'll be highs in the 80's and this is still March which is supposed to be winter. Funny, I looked down at my hands and realized I've developed a new hair technique for him and totally hold the pencil in a different position - almost like I am ...

Kiwi Size 9"x12" Media: Colored Pencil on Bristol Board Well here is the finished kiwi painting.  Got interrupted and only had the table and last piece to do so got out of the rhythm of putting the color layers together and kind of lost the interest and excitement portion I felt intially as I am ready to move on to the next piece. So while not the most exciting thing I've done I did learn a bit more about using layers of marker and colored pencil and will be more discriminating on how I use the marker base in the future as it definitely leaves a layer that is hard for the colored pencil to cover.  Do like some of the translucent sections in the kiwi and need to learn how to leave the white of the paper just like in water color to capitalize on the translucent nature of the wax pencils.  Chalk this one up to a learning exercise and call it done.

Meet Bear, when I did Orion some of my friend's neighbors sent him pictures of their dogs for me to try.  Bear caught my attention because of his unique eye color (which is probably really a result of flash flare, but I think he really does have those yellow-brown eyes) and because I thought he was chuckling.  I really love this posting thing because when I look at it on screen it makes me more objective and I see things that I want to correct - kind of like that mirror check thing only better because you are looking at it like you do when you are working on it, not in reverse image. I wanted to do Bear with only color in his eyes, and right now am not sure if that is going to look kind of weird or not.  Next dog I'd like to do in a graphite grisaille, fix it, and then put colored pencil over it - thinking it will come out with a soft pastel-like look. First priority for this weekend is to finish my kiwi as the challenge date for closing is about to come up....