Painting Bentley's Portrait

This is Bentley the extremely cute dachshund.  I’ve used velour pastel paper with a selection of soft pastels.  The finished piece is 14″x18″ and worked from reference photos which I took of him.

I always work the background first.  It makes sense to me to go from the background to foreground so that all the edges are overlapping in the correct way.

Working top left to bottom right when possible also helps.  It means I can lean on the paper without smudging my work.

I start with the darkest tones first.  Always work dark to light with pastel.  Highlights go on last.

Almost there!  All the darkest areas blocked in and just the details on his body left.