Step-by-Step: Paw Pals

Okay, so this isn’t the usual sort of commission, but when you have an adorable three year old niece who begs you for a picture of Skye from Paw Patrol, why can you say? So I thought I’d use this to give a brief look at the process, from initial sketch to completed colored pencil image. This was rendered on textured colored sketch paper using an expensive set of Crayola Coloured Pencils 24. There's a limit to how refined the end result can be -- and I don't profess to be a great artist by any stretch of the imagination.

Of course, I could have rendered it in a computer paint program and printed it out, but that's not what my patron wanted. Besides, I always like my work to look like it's drawn or painted and not like a photo or CGI. Quite simply, I prefer art that looks like it has been done by hand and has a certain degree of roughness and imperfection to it, rather than being too realistic (or looking as if it came out of a computer).

Don’t get me wrong, I’m in awe of the drafting skills of artists who can produce a painting so accurately that it is almost indistinguishable from a photograph. But other than the technical prowess it demonstrates, I’m not sure I see the point. You could just as easily take a photo. And perhaps in a bit of an ironic twist, we now have paint programs and photo-editing software that enables you to take a photograph, pass it through a filter, and end up with something that looks as if it had been painted by Monette (which some might – perhaps facetiously – argue renders artists obsolete). Ah, the wonders of technology.