Welcome to my pencil pet portrait of Kilo. James (USA) emailed me a few months ago enquiring about my pencil pet portraits as their family had recently lost their beautiful dog called Kilo. James requested a 12 x 10 pencil portrait and you can see the finished scan below. As Kilo was mainly a white dog, I felt the background needed some amount of shading. It has really helped to bring out the light tones in his coat. I have also blended the background into his back and sides so Kilo doesn’t feel cut out within the scene.
James was thrilled and you can read one of his emails below.
Melanie, Looks outstanding to me! I showed this to my cousin and she started crying.
Thanks,
-JW:
Pencil Pet Portrait of Kilo – Photos
Here are a few photos of the portrait, one with my hand drawing and another of the portrait on my plan chest with my pencils to help show scale. Photos often help viewers to really understand what the portrait is like. They seem to be much better than scans as photos are more natural.
Kilo Framed
Here are the photos of my pencil pet portrait of Kilo framed. We really love this frame, it is becoming one of my personal favourite for my pencils drawings. The inner mount on this one is a slightly darker colour. Its a bluer grey than we usually add. We also felt that as the background of the portrait was shaded, it needed a little more contrast. Especially combined with a textured Hayseed colour for the main mount which is a lovely pale cream and the combination works beautifully here on Kilo’s portrait.
Pencil Pet Portrait Video
Some of our readers might have been following my research over the last few months into DSLR cameras and recorders to record my videos on. I received some great advice from experienced filmers and YouTubers as I was looking to upgrade my filming system. The main sticking point with the dslr cameras was that it wasn’t auto focusing as I would expect. There needs to be much manual focusing if you are going to be moving around a lot. I do this quite a bit with the paintings and drawings. This was very difficult when trying to not only film the portraits but to be narrating at the same time. Its not easy!
So the best advice I was given was to upgrade my iPhone. The lens is much better. The main thing I am trying to practice now is to keep tapping the screen to re-focus as I move.
This video of Kilo is the first video using the new phone, but my next one hopefully will be better as I will be using my photography lighting. I now have new bulbs for them which will also help the iPhone lens and keep things sharp and in focus. So we are good to go! Now I just need a painting or drawing to film…….!
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