Siesta

This is the next in my tiny orange dachshund series and my first new piece of 2015.  I love working on these as they are completely my own design and featuring my favourite model!  The first stage of designing these is following Brocci around her favourite spots in the house looking for interesting light and making use of props in my house.  This piece is set in one of her many favourite spots for an afternoon nap.

‘Siesta’ pastel on velour 19″x13″

Here is my model along with my clean desk after Christmas. I’m using the light grey velour as it has a lot of the base tone I want anyway.

The wall with the shadows has taken me almost as long as any other part of this piece. I’ve applied several thin layers of colour to build up a depth and create the effect of sunlight bursting through the blinds.

Adding in some of the darks.  I’m using a mixture of Faber Castell black sticks with Terry Ludwig darks, but mostly Unison soft pastels.  It’s great to have a range for different jobs.

I like a lot of colour, and my home is usually quite colourful too.  I’m making use of some nice cushions and soft fabric textures to add some splashes of pattern and colour.

I often get asked about leather.  A few well placed highlights is the key to painting leather realistically. I’ve also used reds blues and greens as the highlights as the dark shiny sofa reflects everything around it. I’ve used absolutely no white in this painting at all, my lightest value being Unison Grey 27.

The dog itself is so small in this piece.  I’d say she’s about 4″x2″.  I sometimes think I’m mad making life so difficult on this scale but I love the end result. I think I spent an entire day just tweaking her expression with sharp pastel pencil and shards of bigger soft pastel.

At this stage I wasn’t happy with her expression but moved on to the next section as I was going a bit mad!

I love this little table with it’s bendy legs. I’ve painted it before in another of this series and really wanted to include my fern again.

I also like the colour of this pot which brings the blue of the rug upwards in the composition. It also brings Brocci’s orange across.

The beginnings of the fern.  I’ve got the wall shading just how I want it behind the fern so I’m being careful to leave bits of that showing through.

The detail in the fern starts to emerge and a few well placed detailed ferns on top should be enough to suggest it.

This is a close up of my scan of the piece.  This measures about 5″ across by about 3″ which will give you an idea of her scale.

Hope you enjoyed the progress.  This piece will be available from Eakin Gallery Lisburn road, Belfast very soon…www.eakingallery.co.uk