Sketch: Wilfie the Dachshund

Wilfie the Dachshund by M.K. Hajdin

This is a sketch of the adorable Wilfie the dachshund, who lives in England with his two dads.

I can make a sketch like this of your pet for just $25.

New: Custom sketches beginning at just £10

Here’s a sketch of Annie Lennox.

You can have a drawing like this of your own custom image. Prices beginning at just £10 for black and white and £20 for full color.

You will get a .JPEG (or other format if you wish) with custom artwork that you can use on your website, as an avatar for Facebook or Twitter, or you can print it out and hang on your wall. I work at 300 dpi resolution, so it’ll look even better printed out than it does on the screen.

Contact me via Twitter or leave me a comment below if you’re interested.

Sketching pears

I can’t start my new painting yet because I don’t have enough supplies, so I did sketching today.

I paint abstracts, but I like to do some realistic work now and then to keep my skills sharp.

I had bought some pears at the supermarket yesterday, so today I drew them.

Pears, sketch by M.K. Hajdin

Here are the pears I sketched from:

I like the level of control you get with colored pencil. The drawbacks of colored pencil are having to build the color up so slowly in many layers and it’s difficult to get strong darks.

Robert De Niro’s waiting, in hyper-realistic detail

You talkin’ to me?

Robert De Niro by Graham Bradshaw

This isn’t a photo. This is pencil.  Specifically, it’s the work of British artist Graham Bradshaw, whose website explains:

Hyper-realism, although photographic in essence, often entails a softer, much more complex focus on the subject depicted, presenting it as a living, tangible object. These objects and scenes in Hyper-realism drawings/paintings and sculptures are meticulously detailed to create the illusion of a reality not seen in the original photo.

Reality generally doesn’t satisfy me, hyper- or otherwise.  That’s why I lean to the abstract in my own work.  But it’s useful for any artist to spend time looking at different styles of work than the ones they prefer, otherwise there’s a danger of stagnating.

Bradshaw’s work is beautifully executed.  He also hasn’t had any formal training in the arts.  (I doubt it would have helped him much if he had, since they don’t seem to teach drawing any more.)

More of Graham Bradshaw’s work can be found on his website. You can also follow him on Twitter.