On a Roll - Another Dog Portrait Finished

This sweet girl was Cali, the beloved and much-missed terrier mix of Rachele, the owner of Pawsitive Attention Pet Services in Sacramento, CA. I have yet to meet Rachele in person; we "met" through Facebook and she e-mailed a couple of photos of Cali as reference for the portrait. I'll meet her soon enough though, when I deliver the portrait.

I’ll be honest, the photos provided were not the greatest, but since Cali had passed, it was all I had. This factor determined the style of portrait. I wouldn’t have been able to do a really detailed portrait, but one in this style worked out nicely. Here's the reference photo:


And here are two images of the painting in progress:



I had intended her darkest areas to be a darker purple, but a tactical error (when I painted dark orange over the purple) resulted in a rich brown color, which actually worked out well. I have learned over the years that sometimes things just happen and not to fret over it - just work with it. The British phrase “keep calm and carry on” comes to mind in these situations. After I finished with the watercolor, I layered some purple color pencil over the darkest parts and added a very light watercolor wash of orange over most of her nose to warm the purple and to harmonize the colors.

I won't bore you with all the materials used for this portrait. If you're curious, please read the previous post where you'll see two other portraits done in the same style/technique.

Next on my list to finish are the wolfhound (see it in progress here) in mixed media and the horse in pencil from the previous post. I've also started on an ink on scratchboard drawing of a golden retriever.

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Portraits: Finished and In-Progress

Earlier today I delivered two dog portraits to a client - Gus the black lab mix & Buddha the samoyed.




I posted photos of them in the initial stages here. Both portraits are on the watercolor Art Board surface, 4" x 4". I used black Micron pen, watercolor (Dan Smith brand) and Prismacolor colored pencils.

Buddha's portrait is a gift from my client to Buddha's owner, so the photo selection was limited and not ideal since she didn't want to divulge why she wanted some photos of him. The photo that had the best expression was really dark on one side, which is why the portrait is darker on the left. Still, it works and I'm pleased with the way it turned out, and more importantly, so was my client!

Here's the reference photo (taken with a cell phone, I believe), along with a second version that I lightened in Photoshop so I could see some of the detail on the shadowed side.



And here's the reference photo for Gus:


This is another Art Board portrait in progress - I also posted the initial stage of this one in the earlier blog post, but here it is again:



This is Cali, the terrier mix. Here I've added watercolor washes on top of the ink. I'll be adding oranges and golds next. Cali is white, tan and dark brown but I'm tweaking the color palette a bit, as I like to do with this style of portrait.

And speaking of portrait styles, this is a very realistic portrait of Breezy the Arabian mare. There's still quite a bit of work left to do, but I'm really happy with the progress so far. Her mane has been a challenge because it's thick and a bit fuzzy. This drawing is approximately 7" x 7" in pencil on Stonehenge paper.

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