Bella, Ruby & Willow

Today’s blog is about creating a matching group of dog portraits.  These gorgeous dogs were commissioned as a Christmas present and I met them in their local park to take photos for their portraits.  I wanted to create an individual picture of each, unique as each of them were, but using the backdrops to create continuity.
The yellow flowers became the running theme.  I often get asked about painting flowers and as I only tend to paint them as part of a background I haven’t done any in depth demos of them before.  I promise that next time I paint flowers I will take better progress pictures of them.
But for now, here is Bella, Ruby and Willow.

The 3 finished portraits together in my studio.

Bella 14″x14″ Pastel on velour.

Because the flower bed in the background is quite dark the first thing I’ve done is to block in that area.  I will then spray that with hairspray which I use as fixative on lower layers and this will allow me to work on top of that for the foliage. I DO NOT recommend using hairspray as fixative or any fixative in fact unless you’re using velour or another paper you’ve tried and tested with fixing. This paper allows me to do this but always experiment as fixing can have negative affects.

I’ve added in the subtle dark background colours to hint at the soil and surrounding flowerbed on the left. This has allowed me to start that left side of the dog dragging very fine marks out over the background to create the soft edges of the fur.

Working across left to right and downwards I continue to layer up the fur.  I will need to do the area of fur under to chin before painting the muzzle and chin area as this needs to overlap.

I’ve left the foreground flowers until last as they are in front of Bella.  To paint the Rudbeckia flowers I firstly lay down the deep undercolours of purples and reds on the petals.  Then I add the lighter tones of yellows leaving the under tones shining through as the creases of the flower.   A few lemony yellow highlights show where the light hits the flower.

Ruby 14″x14″ Pastel on velour

It’s pretty much the same process for all three portraits. I start by blocking in the darkest areas and fixing.

The flowers furtherest away in Ruby’s picture have a slight blur to them as they did in my photos.  This gives a real sense of depth and distance. The velour paper allows me to put vibrant green clearly on top of black.  This is not something you can do on every paper and this allows me to use pastels in this painterly way working from dark to light.

You can see here I select colours as I go and they stay out on the desk in front of me.  This means I have my whole palette worked out and just have to lift as I need.

Here is a good example of why I leave the muzzle area to last.  Now when I bring the chin hair down over the chest, the hair below will peep through.

Willow 14″x14″ Pastel on velour

Darks blocked in

In Willow’s picture all the flowers are quite distant so they’re not in focus.  I’ve made more use of the grassy area in Willow’s as her light colouring will stand out really well against the dark greens.

Painting a white dog is so tricky.  I use blues and fleshy tones as the shadow areas and then use a variety of lights to highlight.  I try and save pure white for the very final highlights.  A white dog reflects the colours around them.

Willow had a very distinctive smile which I loved!  Most of her eyes were hidden in under that lovely coat so I enhanced the photo a little by letting more of her eyes shine through.

This is her pretty much done.  I find that if I fix at this point it marginally darkens everything so I can go back and add a top layer of highlights just giving the coat that bit more depth.