A Trio of Greys

This morning I delivered three greyhound portraits to a client who also happens to run the Greyhound Friends for Life (GFFL)'s rescue facility in Auburn, CA. The facility is wonderful and they've improved it further since I was last there. It's not open to the public, but they usually have an open house or play day a couple of times a year - check the events calendar for dates. Of course, if you're interested in adopting a wonderful greyhound (or grey/sighthound mix) they have some really nice dogs available there or at other GFFL facilities.

Each portrait is 8" x 8" in watercolor on Yupo, with a little bit of color pencil. The color schemes were chosen to work together - I used shades of purple as a unifying color for the dogs' darkest areas. The body colors - yellow, blue or orange - are what the client selected to match each dog's personality. The backgrounds all have blue in them and two of them have green in varying amounts. I took photos of the paintings at various stages of progress.


"Swaps" - finished portrait


"Swaps" - reference photo


This is over halfway done. The background and ears are finished and I've blocked in the colors of the dog, but need to work on the blending of the brindle pattern and add detail.



I've blended most of the brindle pattern by pushing paint around, lifting it and adding more of both purple, yellow and orange. The arrow points to an area that still needs work.



"Lulu" - finished portrait


"Lulu" - reference photo


Here I've done the background and have blocked in most of the purple areas. The ears are mostly finished. The white area is the unpainted Yupo.



Nearing completion, but still need to add detail and more blue in her face.



A detail of the finished portrait. Some of the small, fine marks around her eye are color pencil.



"Ace" - finished portrait


"Ace" - reference photo

I posted in progress photos and details of Ace's portrait last year, see them here.