Backpack's Rock...

I had an hour or so free yesterday afternoon so grabbed the opportunity to paint his little pen and wash picture of a bear sitting on a rock at Brook's Falls.  I don't know which bear it is - I took the photo using the snap function on the Explore.org's live cam at Katmai National Park in the summer.  I do know the rock in the river has the pet name of 'Backpack's Rock' as a bear with the nickname Backpack likes to sit there, but I am pretty sure this is not him.

Much as I would like to continue producing bear paintings, I have to get on with some paid work next week!

Hope & A Bear...

 As always happens, I think I have so much to do on a painting and then suddenly it is finished.  I completed this yesterday morning, so it is now ready to be packed up and sent to Greece.  This was done in a mixture of watercolour and coloured pencils - I started off with Derwent Drawing Pencils, but ended up using a selection of all the coloured pencils I have in order to get the depth of colour I needed.

So in the afternoon I spent an hour or so on this little watercolour of a polar bear.  I used a photo I'd taken from the Explore.org polar bear cams for inspiration.  This is now for sale in my Etsy shop, cheaper than my usual work - might make a nice Christmas present?

Hope 2

 This one is taking a long time - the horse is very dark and it is difficult to get the richness and depth of colour with just pencils.  I'm getting there - the paper is starting to feel like worked leather with the amount of pigment and hammering it is taking!  Another couple of days should do it.

We have a very small pond at the bottom of our garden - I mean it is tiny, no more than a metre across.  When we cleaned it out earlier this year, we removed 17 frogs!  (We kept them in a bucket and put them all back when we were done.)  While feeding the birds yesterday, I noticed one of them popping up to say hello.  Hello.

Currently on the needles - leafy green scarf

Interlude...

Yesterday I felt very tired and as a result, quite down and unable to concentrate properly on my commissioned horse portrait.  Instead, I took my mind off the blues by painting this bear from one of the snaps I took through the Explore.org web cams at Katmai National Park.  This photo was taken early one morning in the summer, when there was just one lone bear fishing in the water.  The colour had not yet come on the cameras as it was just dawn.  So I painted this using only Payne's Grey watercolour on paper.  It took several hours and I didn't feel any more cheerful after I'd finished but I did have a satisfactory painting at least!

Hope...

I've been incredibly busy the past week or so, but unfortunately it was mainly knitting things that I can't show yet.  However, I have been painting - this is a horse called Hope, being worked in mixed media (watercolour and coloured pencil)  She is very dark so it is taking quite a bit of effort to get the colour right.  It needs a good few days yet, but progressing nicely.