Local portrait artist Cindy Chase
demonstrated her technique of rendering animals to the Day Enrichment
Art Appreciation Group. Cindy had on display a variety of animal
portraits she has created using pastel and graphite. Cindy spoke of
her love of animals which began in childhood, and of her father’s
creative influence. Cindy’s father, also an artist, would spend hours
with Cindy when she was a child; Cindy would make sketches after
watching her Father make art in his Boston studio.
Cindy is also a recovery nurse at an
animal hospital where she is surrounded by all types of animals every
day. Even though Cindy has access to live animals, she often works
from photographs when she creates her drawings because its takes many
hours or days to create a portrait, and real animals will just not
pose for that long!
Cindy demonstrated how she begins with a
rough sketch of the animals head, and then adds charcoal and fur
textures using graphite. Eventually Cindy adds pastel colors to
highlight certain characteristics of the animal such as eye color.
Participants had the opportunity to create animal portraits using some
of Cindy’s techniques (e.g. drawing a “V” as a guideline for placement
of eyes, nose, mouth) and tools.
