Ah, delicious sauteed zucchini and steamed asparagus with grated asiago cheese on top. Really, everything looks beautiful atop our speckled blue plates!

The final step in this piece was to draw in very fine detail in the bear's fur, which ranged in texture from soft and fluffy to quite straight and wiry. The majority of the work in this last stage was properly establishing the varying intensity of light – a difficult prospect as the bear was standing in dappled shadow in my reference photo!

My next step was to start to pull out fine detail in the fur, first with medium-sized, somewhat opaque strokes, then going over those with sharper, more defined lines. I had some time away from the image before I started this stage, which gave me the opportunity to spot some errors in my drawing. I fixed those before starting in on the detailed textures in this image.

The next stage in my drawing was to quickly rough in more greys, using the direction of the charcoal strokes to record the way the bear's fur laid against the body or stuck up in tufts. In order to keep the focus on the bear, I simplified the background a bit from what I started with in my initial sketch:

I've recently gone back to complete a series of animal drawings that I started a few years ago (see the Drawing section of my website for the first two drawings in the series).
Currently I'm working on a charcoal piece that I thought I'd share as it progresses. This was the first stage, where I sketched in landmark shapes, then began to lay in areas of varying grey:

I've learned the hard way, time and time again how important – how ESSENTIAL it is to have an artist's contract. I've been searching for a decent example of an artist's contract for longer than I care to admit, and only recently found one that's pretty much perfect for my needs.
The web site Escape From Illustration Island has an excellent article called How to Protect Yourself With a Solid Contract, and provides an example of a very thorough Artist's Letter of Agreement to use as a template for your own contract. Be sure to check out the treasure trove of other articles on this site too. I hope this helps you as much as it helped me!

The lowly apple in coloured pencil.
Back to basics is sometimes a relief in a busy week. I'm writing up an Artist's Agreement (a client contract) for myself, and it's taken more time than I anticipated... Time-consuming, but so, so necessary!

I just can't get enough of the great colours that result from my smoothie experiments! I think the key ingredient is spinach – besides being great for you, the colour is so brilliant, no matter what you mix it with. This particular smoothie contains fresh baby spinach, frozen mango, banana, pineapple juice and Greek yoghurt. Yum!

Another view from out the window – trying to catch the colours before the leaves are gone!

A quick watercolour of the glorious fall colours around here. The leaves were beautiful while they lasted!