Time for another challenging animal collective! This time I went to photograph these three gorgeous dogs and after many photos later and much cutting and pasting I think I found a composition which placed them all in the lush greenery of their back garden.
Hope you enjoy the progress. Sorry for writing less than usual here but I hope all the progress photos I took of this piece will be informative!
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| The finished painting 20″x16″ Pastel on velour |
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| My line drawing on the velour and I’m starting to block in the dark background. The great thing about pastel is being able to work dark to light. The better quality pastel and the type of paper you use will determine how strongly you can apply the lighter colours. |
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| Having that background in makes it easy to make the edges of the dogs really sit in front. Using a Pitt pastel pencil for very small detail. |
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| You can see how I layer up fur on Alphie. He has many shades from my Unison 18 Animal set which includes Dark14 and Grey 8 two of my favourite purples for painting black dogs. |
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| It can be tricky to make white dogs look right within their setting. I don’t want her to be too white as she is reflecting a lot of the colours around her. But as I work with dust flying around, the white can dull a bit so I tend to make her a little brighter to allow for this. I’ve used a lot of Unison Light range as well as Grey 26 which has a yellowy tint. |
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| I’ve broken a big stick to get good sharp edges all around. Seems awful to break them but they’re most useful to me broken in bits! |
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| When I get Lily’s first layer on I will give it a light spray and then re highlight all the whitest areas to really make them stand out. |
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| Close up detail of Alphie’s finished face. Love the texture of velour up close! |
If you’d like to get in touch about your own portrait please email me at info@emmacolbertart.com. Also visit www.EmmaColbertArt.com for more information. 🙂
Just magic… 🙂
Thank you for visiting and commenting Anonymous 😉