It’s me again – back with a new blog about the origins of Your Pet Portraits…
So, today it’s all about where I actually began with my work. How did drawing Portraits become such a hugely important part of my life?
Well… back when I was a child (insert Luther Vandross backing music here…) I was SO creative. I mean the kinda creative that built anything out of everything!
From Monsters out of burger boxes back in my early childhood, to clubhouses made from paper and home-made glue (flour, eggs, water and something else… much to my Mother’s dismay!… hmm…)
Growing up I delved into the world of Anime (a favourite being Pokemon of course) and made my own slap-dash sketchbooks from cheap paper you get for the printer. That didn’t matter though, I was creating and learning and developing my skills. It was the practice that made the real difference, knowing which materials were best came later on.
As my age developed so did my interests, from Anime to Realism, I began drawing Portraits. I took my inspirations from magazine covers, drawing the likes of Keira Knightly and Leona Lewis.
I was swiftly transfixed in creating the perfect tones and details and eyes… well they were the best part. Safe to say History wasn’t my favourite subject so you could see me sat doodling eyes in the back of my book. (Ooops!)
Mrs Rumfit didn’t like that!
I believe that drawing people developed my skills so well that when it came to drawing pets, it simply became a case of changing my subject matter, my materials were just the same as before.
In my later studies I was so focused on Portraiture. I went back to my roots of drawing from magazines. I’d always focused on relatively small drawings until my Pet Portraits became more significant. So then I focused on scale during my studies and developed a drawing of an actress which was Size A2, much larger than anything I’d ever created. It took around two weeks to complete fully.
I learnt a lot around this time that when you scale up, your detail becomes significantly more important; tones and skin patterns become more prominent when you make your work bigger, and so this drawing became a learning curve.
Drawing from the perfect images in magazines with airbrushed skin and perfect features, with no wrinkles or details, doesn’t satisfy me now, as much as it did my younger self.
A long while after I started drawing people, I started drawing pets. I entered a competition where I had to raise money for Charity. I didn’t have much help so I knew the only potentially successful thing I could do was to use my creativity.
I began to tell people I would draw their pictures in return for donations, which is when Rolo the cat was first created along with a cute little portrait of my nephew!
You never realise how cool something is when you see how happy it makes other people. My friend and sister were made up with their drawings and it spurred me on to make more.
These two images were sections of my first ever Oil Painting, where I worked from two images and incorporated them into the same painting. A commission for a friend to give to her husband at Christmas.
At this point I knew I had something special. So what did I do? I spent my evenings in Costa with hot chocolate beside me (don’t forget the flake!) drawing and drawing and drawing.
Then, Bella was born!
Following some Social Media sharing of Bella, people really wanted to have a little bit of what I could do. They loved their pets so much that they just had to have that which represented something so special to them.
My vision for what I wanted to do as an artist was no way near fully formed, and even to this day it’s ever changing. Sure enough I want to continue with developing my artistic skills, knowledge and understanding.
And I will continue to draw pets, and people, and other work in between.
In recent years, drawing famous people alongside pets has been an interest of mine.
One particular favourite is my Einstein Portrait. I have drawn Einstein on two separate occasions now and I have to say he is an interesting subject.
Far removed from the airbrushed representations in magazines, Einstein’s lines were glorious and made for incredible contrast to his wiry, white hair!
I never really knew how I figured out what I was good at. I guess it just felt natural. Creating is never a chore, and I never feel awkward doing it. It’s contentment that I feel when I know I’m creating something that didn’t exist before, when I know that this very thing I’m creating with my own hands is going to make someone happy.
I think practice was the key. People always ask me if I could teach other people to draw like I do. ‘Of course, how long have you got?’ I would reply.
I can just hear the teachers in school who used to say “Practice Makes Perfect”…
But as an Educator in today’s Society, I say different…
Practice Makes Progress.
Which is infinitely better than perfect.
M.
