This is Riley, a last-minute commission before Christmas.  A straight-forward graphite on A4 Waterford watercolour paper.

He's all finished now and I've collected him from Brown's Fine Art Gallery in Locks Heath as I wanted him properly photographed and printed so as I've got a copy for future art fairs.  I've really enjoyed using the acrylic inks as they're great for fine detail and the colours have a great strength.  Rapidly becoming my favourite medium (beginning to overtake coloured pencil).

Here's Spirit from start to finish.  A lovely Cavalier King Charles spaniel who is just like Minty - one of our family dogs when I was growing up; so I particularly enjoyed painting this one!  Having said that, I do enjoy them all.  I can't believe I haven't painted at all up until a few years' ago - all that wasted painting time!  Now, Spirit, I've had the pleasure of meeting on several occasions as Spirit's owners and myself often walk our dogs in the same park.

Busy this morning, darkening down and adding  more detail.  I've just popped downstairs to upload this and also to give my two naughty boys a kong each.  Max hasn't had one before so isn't too sure what to do with it.  Buddy's throwing it round the room, but the treats inside are stuck to the peanut butter!  That's enough now - back to work . . .

Today I darkened down the darker areas of fur with black conte pastel.  The mouth I gave a layer of pale blue covered with two different pinks; I'll come back to this at the end.  The eyes: I used three different browns; again, I'll continue with the fur then go back and make a few more changes to them to sharpen the definition.  For some reason I find noses incredibly difficult!  It doesn't make sense, I know, because I find eyes and mouth ok, but I'm building the nose very slowly as velour paper isn't very forgiving with mistakes!

Jubilee is my latest commission; a working police dog and all round handsome chap.  I'm doing him in pastels as I did 'Relax with a Max' - except on amber-coloured velour paper.  The paper is A3, my favourite size to draw and he's attached to my new Reeves drawing board which I'm very pleased with!  Here are some in-progress photos:

I'm pleased with progress on this one as it's a technique I've never tried before.  I attended a workshop in  June with Clive Meredith (www.artofclivemeredith.blogspot.com) and was very inspired by his use of layering different grades of graphite pencil to get a truly lifelike depth.  This is my effort so far and is probably about 15 hours' work by now (it is A3!)

Here he is . . . white picture mount, backed and covered in cellophane to keep him clean.  I thoroughly enjoyed drawing him - he looks a real character.

Another two hours or so and most of the detail is there.  I'm finding this much easier now I've got a daylight bulb in my lamp; much easier on the eyes and no distracting colours thrown onto the page.  I've just got the detail of the ears to do.  I left these as they look a slightly different texture to the body fur - more silky - and the curls are a tad tighter.  The bib, also, needs some shading as it's too stark as it is.

 I'm happy with the sketches and now have transferred the outline to some Fabriano 50% cotton rag paper.  I've not used this before, so a great learning experience all round.  The pencils I'm using are Faber-Castell and Derwent graphite.

This is progress about 2 hours from the outline.  Still a fair few layers to do in order to get the depth.

This photo shows the original image, although I'm using a couple in order to check between features that aren't too clear.