TITLE: "Tru Kings Gold"
DATE: © 2004
SIZE: 8 by 10 inches
MEDIUM: colored pencil and graphite on gray Stonehenge paper
PRICE: sold, collection of J. & A.Wilson, Oregon, USA (commission)

It's hard to go wrong when your subject is as gorgeous as King. He has just a fabulous presence, and I love his markings. This was another one where the pose wasn't what we originally had in mind. The client had wanted a head shot, so I took several in his nice show halter, but had a few shots left at the end of the roll (ha ha, back in the days when I shot film!) so I said "turn him loose!" When I got the photos back, the one on which I based this photo just totally stood out to me as being "the one" that captured King, and I was so happy when she picked that photo for me to use as a basis for this drawing. The background came from my imagination. I knew it had to be dark, to really make King stand out, and I was so happy with how the background turned out for Tucker that I decided to do something similar and use graphite for the background, but really give it an abstract dusty/stormy look. Graphite really has a very different surface quality than the colored pencil foreground, and keeps the subject from blending into the background (which is probably what would have happened if I had used dark gray colored pencil instead.) Some people think it's horrible to mix graphite and colored pencil, but I am not that much of a purist, and I'll do what it takes to get the look I want!

King was just over a year old when I did this portrait, and at the time I thought he was a two year old! He was huge!