Dog Study

Over our next six week block with Don we are studying pet portraits.  In class last week we did lots of observing, chatting about technique and then started with a graphite study of the reference material.  Image courtesy of Don.

Working on a graphite sketch in class....  Having not used graphite for ages I felt very awkward and found this quite hard at first.  By the end of class I was in love with drawing again and getting back into the swing of things.  I concentrated on the nose and getting the light in the eye right.

Today I did a quick sketch taking in more of the little puppers and probably due to the speed of the exercise gave the poor thing a stretchy crazy face!  Added a colour chart to work from for the next step also.

I decided to do a study to keep in my sketchbook so dragged out some awful oil paint paper that I could tape in and it wouldn't be too bulky.  A very short time into painting I remembered why I had dubbed this paper as awful....it sucks the moisture out of the paint and makes application, blending etc very difficult.  Once again I concentrated on the eye and nose features then got sort of sidetracked and fascinated by painting the darks and mid tones and letting the white paper make up it's own highlights.  This is only a study remember and not a completed painting by any means.  If I have time tomorrow after knit 'n' natter I will do a final piece on canvas to take this right through.  I had thought of doing a tonal painting (white, gray through to darkest gray) but decided to dive right in with colour due to time constraints.

Don suggested mixing a dark purple from the colours in my chosen palette (see above) and I think it worked really well.  Before running out of time I was working on adding darker, cooler tones to the left to make that side of the face recede, and warm tones and more light on the right side to bring it forward.  I was quite enjoying myself and was disappointed to run out of time.  Remember, you can click on the images to enlarge them and have a closer look.

Enjoy!