We are delighted to share the first assignment from Amanda Taylor, who has recently joined our Pet Portraits Diploma Course with tutor Heather Jolliffe.
Amanda tells us that she has done a little art at school but nothing since, and that drawings are her particular passion, something she hopes to develop and hopefully speed up with the course. On the evidence of this first submission, she has absolutely nothing to worry about.
The assignment takes students through a series of exercises designed to build a strong foundation in pencil drawing, from understanding tone and form through basic geometric shapes all the way through to more complex, textured subjects.
Amanda’s tonal strip and shape studies show a lovely, careful approach to understanding how light falls across different surfaces, with clean, confident shading that already demonstrates a good instinct for the range of tones needed to make a form feel three-dimensional. Her stone jug study is a particularly strong piece, the heavy, rounded body of the jug sitting solidly on the decking beneath it, with beautifully handled highlights and a convincing cast shadow.
Amanda’s personal piece, a wonderfully detailed portrait of her own fluffy, mischievous-looking dog complete with a bottle of bubble bath, is charming and technically impressive in equal measure. Capturing a curly, textured coat in pencil is genuinely challenging, and Amanda has done it beautifully.
This is a wonderful start to what promises to be a very exciting course journey. We cannot wait to see what Amanda produces next!
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