Welcome!
Here you will find up to the minute news from the studio and see the pet portraits we are currently working on. You are more than welcome to contact us at any time!
petportraitartist@gmail.comTraditional Techniques
All of the paintings you see on our blog are commissions from clients worldwide. We traditionally hand paint or draw every pet portrait ourselves. There's no digital trickery involved! We start by drawing out the image by hand and follow on with painting in oils, pastel or in pencil and you can follow each stage we make here on the blog on a daily basis.
Jul
16
As some of my readers will know I run a Pet Portrait Diploma Course in association with the London Art College. I wrote, illustrated and tutor the course which is very popular for budding artists who want to brush up on their drawing skills and learn to paint and draw animals. It has been running for a fair few years now and I have been taking the time over the lst couple fo months to create a new revised 2010 edition for new students who enrol.
I have taken this opportunity to add some of Nicks step by step pastel portraits into the course and some close up examples of his work on velour, as this medium seem to be very popular with budding artists. One of my favourite professional artists has also allowed me to use her work as examples in the acrylic section, and for close ups in the how to paint eyes, noses, fur etc and that is Nicky Jones www.faithfulfriendsportraits.co.uk the detail in her work is mesmerising and I feel honoured to be allowed to use a few of her pieces for my students to view and learn from.
If you would like to find out more about the Diploma please visit the London Art College website or my own page about the course here – Pet Portrait Diploma.
Oct
4
We are now back from the London Art College Annual General Meeting (as many of you know I tutor for their distance learning courses and run the website for them) and it went really well, the feedback was great. Nick was taking the photos so he isn’t in any of them sadly, which is a shame as he is a tutor too! The principle started with a short introduction and then handed over to Nick and myself as we cover the online technical side of things, introducing them to new ways of tutoring, the new features on the website and how they can all get involved. This year we did three video presentations using screen capture software, showing new features and these seemed to inspire and impress too!
We have spent a lot of our spare time in the last couple of weeks preparing for the meeting so hopefully things will get back to normal a little now, concentrating on client emails, the blogs and most importantly our portraits and managing also to have a few more evenings off : )
May
27
Young Artist Course News!
If you have kids who are budding artists from aged 7 upwards, then this course has been written just for them! I originally wrote it, in association with the London Art College in 2003, as we were aware that a lot of children are home schooled, or parents just wanted to give their kids that little extra help with their art. Children can very easily become frustrated with their drawings, they can get to a certain level on their own, but often get stuck and end up doing something else. With just a little bit of guidance they can sky rocket!
I felt it was the right time to update the course, being six years old they were getting a little tired and needed updating up a bit. So I have been working on and off this last month going through each page, adding and taking out sections. I have finally finished and im so pleased with the results. I now have a new system thought the course with headings – Step By Steps, Mini Challenges, Try it Yourself and Exercises and the young artists can identify these by the same illustrations through the course. Ladybird, Bumble Bee, footsteps and a pencil. Each section of the course dis colour divided too so they will know where they are at all times.
I have added some screen captures of the course itself, I have been careful not to give too larger resolution images for copyright reasons, as I’m sure you can understand, however you are able to see larger versions on my website Young Artists Course 1 and the London Art College website too.
I have also added an edited version of a Young Artist Critique on You Tube which can be seen below and on both my website and the London Art College website, along with a couple of pictures to go with it of the artwork of a ‘before and after’. Students who send work in electronically receive this kind of audio visual critique which is uploaded to the London Art Colleges Artwork Submission Area where each student has their own secure place to login to view their work and critiques. Those students who prefer to use the postal system receive an audio critique playable in their hifi or computer.
I hope that many of you who are reading this have budding artists as kids and you are more then welcome to contact me at any time about the course, or you can contact the London Art College too. Im off now to start updating the second course and I have already planned the third, the outline was written last year but time has escaped me. It will get done though!
May
14
Coloured Pencil Certificate Course…Tutor Needed!
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Hi Everyone,
I just cant believe how busy things are at the moment, I know I have often said we have been really busy before, but we are getting booked up far in advance now and over this weekend I need to plan out a calender of our schedule.
Nick and myself have done a lot of extra things in our business over the time, illustration book publishing work, tutoring, creating learn to draw cd roms, drawing kids at camp, website design for artists and online shop owners, brochure design and printing for builders and conceptual drawings and paintings for builders / architects plus loads more I cant think of : ) Over the years we have had to scale down our other art jobs to concentrate more on pet portraits as our client list grew. At this stage in our careers we now only paint and tutor. I only look after two other websites, whereas at one point I had a string of sites to look after, I found it time consuming and it ate up too many painting hours. Our own sites, as well as the administrative side of our business takes up a lot more time than I could ever have imagined.
So the more booked up we are, the less time we have for other things. I have been tutoring for a long time now, over 10 years, and have written the Pet Portrait diploma course which I love to tutor and the children courses are great, I just adore working with the kids, but something has to give, and unfortunately it has to be the coloured pencil course. It needs a lot of work doing to it, and it just needs the love and attention which I am unable to give it. With Nick taking over the Portraiture course from Linda O’Gorman who has now retired, he hasn’t got time to take it over either. So we are looking for a new tutor to give the course a new lease of life!
We already have had quite a few wonderful submissions, and I can see from the enthusiastically written letters that the course is going to get the attention it deserves. So if you feel you would be a good candidate you are more than welcome to read the info below and send your submissions to me before the end of May, which is the deadline for the first stage of the process.
I would like to wish everyone the best of luck for the post. I will be collaborating with the principle and we will take our time to make sure we have the best person for the job! I of course will be posting who the lucky candidate is when the decision has been made.
Tutor Required for London Art College Distance Learning Course
There is a vacancy for a distance Learning Course Tutor for the Coloured Pencil Certificate Course. This is a unique opportunity to work with students from the comfort of your own home or studio. The successful applicant will eventually be able to put their mark on the course and make it their own. The post requires a few hours per week in tutoring, which will start gradually as you take over the new enrollees. The tutor will be required to have some general computer skills. Previous experience in tutoring may help but it is not necessary.
This is open to UK applicants only
Application – Stage 1
If you are interested in taking over the tutoring post for the coloured pencil course please entitle your email ‘CP Course tutor vacancy’ and include
- a few high res examples of your coloured pencil artwork,
- A brief background of your experiences / education /age range
- Tutoring experiences if any,
- Whether you have a full / part time job or work as an artist full / part time.
Please email this to Melanie Phillips – petportraitartist@gmail.com
Application – Stage 2
In the second stage of the application, the successful applicants will be asked to produce a sample critique. An excerpt of a previous students critique will be given to each applicant to show what we are looking for. You will be given three pieces of artwork to critique and this can be then emailed along with your feedback, length of time the critique took and any other comments you may have.Good Luck!
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