Cooper•ations

Mona Lily

Art, Charcoal, Drawings, Illustration No Responses »

May 162013

"Mona Lily," copyright 2013, Val Cooper. Graphite, Conte crayon and charcoal on Fabriano Uno.

This is a portrait I drew for my mother-in-law to commemorate her beloved bichon frisee who recently passed away. I presented it to her on Mother’s Day and we got a little weepy about it. It was our first family get together without Lily.

“I see what you did there,” my husband said. “You made the eyes just a little bigger to make her more appealing.”

Yep. Sometimes you don’t draw what you see.

By the way — I love this paper, Fabriano Uno 140-pound cold press. This was my first time using it. It is very forgiving, bright, with just the right amount of tooth for drawing. I will be testing colored pencil on it soon.

Pencil Portrait of My Calico Cat

Art, Drawings, Illustration No Responses »

Apr 052013

This is Bird the cat. She is a calico and very challenging to draw because of the irregularity of her markings. It’s as if someone dipped her face in red tiger-stripe paint and her paws and belly in white. Or she started out white and got dipped in stripes and then black. Anyway, she is fun to look at. In this drawing I used a combination of 4B and HB pencils.

Contact me via email val@valcooper.com to arrange a portrait of your pet. A unique gift for US$150.00.

"Calico Cat Named Bird," copyright 2013 Val Cooper, 8 x 10 inches, graphite on paper.

Doggies Playing

Art, Colored Pencil, Drawings, Illustration No Responses »

Apr 022013

Here is a colored pencil sketch I did of my friend’s whippets having fun. They get really excited and happy when I come to visit. So much fun!

"Doggies Playing," detail, colored pencil on acid-free paper, 18" x 12", copyright 2013, Val Cooper.

Easter Chicken

Art, Drawings, Illustration No Responses »

Mar 312013

"Esther the RI Red Hen," graphite on paper, 11 x 8-1/2" copyright 2013 V. Cooper

Don’t forget to hug your chicken this Easter!

Contact me if you want to schedule a portrait of your favorite critter. $150 for 8-1/x x 11 pencil, $200 colored pencil — unframed. Write to val@valcooper.com. Two-week turn around after receipt of suitable image or URL to your pet’s video and your US$75 deposit.

Sleeping Cat

Art, Drawings, Illustration No Responses »

Mar 142013

My tabby cat is my new muse. There is something undeniably cute about a cat with his nose tucked under his paw. I used two different types of pencil for this drawing, and a soft but heavy paper like BFK Rives (but I could not find a watermark on this piece of paper). For most of the tones I used an HB lead in a mechanical pencil. For the darks I used a Bohemia Works (by Grumbacher) wood-less 4B pencil.

“Happy Whippet” Colored Pencil Drawing

Art, Colored Pencil, Drawings, Illustration No Responses »

Feb 282013

This recently completed work has already been sold. I love to do animal portraits and work from photographs as well as life. You can commission a portrait of your pet by emailing me at val@valcooper.com. I charge US$200 plus shipping for a 9 x 12 portrait and I accept funds via PayPal or money order.

“Shasta the Dark Brahma”

Art, Colored Pencil, Drawings No Responses »

Feb 132013

This is a colored pencil portrait of one of my chickens, 8″ x 10″ on acid-free paper. The pencils I use, Spectracolor Design pencils by Faber Castell, have a velvety quality and the right amount of wax for blending colors. Sadly they are no longer being manufactured.

Shasta was one of my beloved chickens. She was a dark Brahma (there is a light variety), a good chicken for meat and eggs, but we kept her for eggs only. A kind neighbor gave her to me when she was concerned about her getting up and down from her high roosts. Mine were much lower by comparison.

Brahmas are great chickens for New England because their waddles and rose combs close to their bodies and don’t get as easily frost bitten as the larger combs on other breeds of chicken. Brahmas are very docile and a great, soft armful if you can get them used to being picked up. Shasta didn’t like it at first but over time, with gentle patience, she got used to me picking her up for a short hug.

Unfortunately, a fox got her this fall. But I have lots of memories and pictures of her to work from, so she will always be with me.

Paperwhites

Drawings No Responses »

Jan 172013

Impatient for spring to come, I forced some narcissus bulbs, also called “paperwhites,” and then did a few drawings of them. This one I scanned and digitally colored the pistils in Photoshop just for fun. I used a plain ol’ Black Velvet number 2 pencil on smooth Bristol vellum made by Strathmore.

These fragrant flowers provide an excellent exercise in drawing white, looking for the brightest bright and the darkest dark, with a lot of grays in between.

Autumn in My Back Yard

Art, Egg tempera, Paintings No Responses »

Oct 172012

This is my interpretation of the energy flowing around the woods behind my house. We live on the windward side of a mountain and during the fall and winter the wind rushes by us, rumbling like an infinitely long freight train.

Wild turkeys trek across this scene to reach their secret places in the woods. A fisher cat lopes along the wall out back separating this stand of trees from the farmer’s cow pasture. In one of the pine trees in the distance, a family of red-tail hawks rises and disperses. Last winter I watched an old coyote stagger through the crusty snow, exit stage left.

A half-brown, half-black pileated woodpecker swoops down to pick through my compost pile. The deer come to limb-up my arbor vitae. Somewhere in those woods are foxes who have grown up on my chicken flock.

“Tomorrow’s Egg”

Art, Colored Pencil, Watercolor No Responses »

Sep 192012

I recently finished this painting of two of my hens, now passed on, Surfer Girl (a California white, mostly Leghorn), in the front, and Ginger behind her. They were buddies who went everywhere together. I worked from a photograph I had taken early in the spring this year. I started with watercolor, added some colored pencil, and finished with India ink stipple.

Surfer Girl was petite and delicate, but she would gorge herself daily and give us a jumbo egg the next morning. You can see one forming here in her crop, so that’s why I call this image “Tomorrow’s Egg.”

Ginger was never quite right as a chicken. She had about one good year laying eggs, and then they started to get sporadic and weird. She was laying shell-less eggs, in spite of calcium and other supplements, before she stopped altogether and was basically a pet chicken for the year before she died.

Ginger was the leader of the pack, so after she was gone, the remaining three hens were lost without her; especially Surfer Girl. That hen called for Ginger constantly, and I and the others just weren’t suitable replacement. I have photographs and video of my Rhode Island Red Ester trying to console Surfer Girl. A couple of weeks ago, she encountered a fox who took her away to see Ginger.

Ester caught me stroking a white feather I had picked up near the hen house, and gave me a questioning look. I showed her the feather without really thinking and her eyelid came up halfway as if she were about to cry. So I’ve been collecting the feathers and hiding them away.

I miss Ginger and Surfer Girl a lot.

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