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Friday 17 November 2017

Gerbil Portrait

So you're partner is turning 30... you want to make him something special but have no idea what to do... so you draw your gerbils!

Yes, I even do pet portraits for people I know, it's good I know so many animal lovers!

Our gerbies are named after Guardians of the Galaxy characters so I decided to draw them in character! It was a complete challenge and took a lot longer than it should have!
Apparently I work a lot better and quicker when I'm working on pets other than my own.

This portrait went through three sketches before finally becoming the painting it is today.
I had fun with getting the sizing wrong to start with making them much too big for the frame they were going in, so then I decided to make another sketch but this time keeping to the correct sizes.
This went well, I even got to the inking stage and then I was stupid... I normally use very light, hard pencils to work on sketches so that they are almost invisible.
I was so tired the day I worked on these guys that I used a very dark, soft pencil that would not erase from the paper!
Sometimes you really shouldn't be working if you're that tired, trust me, tiredness can lead to some very silly mistakes! Like drinking paint water, putting a paint brush in your tea, knocking over paint water on to the painting, dropping a dirty brush on to the painting... the list goes on and I've done all of them!

My worst has been falling asleep face down on a painting, I was in my teens and going through exams which is my excuse but waking up stuck to the paper is never a fun experience!

So back to the gerbils, I then made another sketch using the lightest pencil I own and finally got it how I wanted.
The painting was also fun as I just couldn't decide on the colours to use so of course that took longer than normal and then the words... oh the hand lettering that I absolutely hate!

Hand lettering is something I admire and something that I truly cannot do! I tend to try to hard and mess things up, hopefully this is a skill I can gain soon but for now with the gerbils... it's a little bit lacking but it's mainly all about the gerbils in character!

So here they are, after all the insanity of the past two weeks getting them done!



And of course the gerbils had to get in on the photos too, Drax in the bottom right posed perfectly!

So now I just get to give it to the boyfriend and hope he's amused by it.

Remember pet portraits are still available from me. I will be posting last Christmas order dates on Monday so keep an eye out if you're planning on making any orders from me for the festive period!

Have a wonderful weekend!

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