What a beauty of a dog to be painting!  Boisterous and beautiful, this is Odin.

 

Odin’s finished portrait.  12″x10″

 

My line drawing transferred onto the sandy coloured velour
and neatened a bit further with a pastel pencil.  I’ve
layered in some subtle light tones in the background with
a slight gradient from dark to light to contrast the light
and dark sides of the dog.
 I’m takin Odin’s piece to do a day long demo
at Art & Home my local art shop and framers,
so I’ve just started to layer in some of the top
of his head and ears.  I’m really just getting
an idea of the palette for this. I’m testing Unison’s
Animal Half Stick 30 set for this and so far the
30 colours are covering all I need.  I have used nearly
all those browns in the set as I need both cool and
warm tones for the shadowed side of his face.
This is as far as I got before the demo.
 By lunch time I’ve chatted to a good few customers
who stopped to look at Odin in progress.
I love his unusual eyes with that cool blue on the cool
side of his face.  It makes sense for me to work downwards
on his ears and head as the fur layers up naturally that way.
But there will be times when I work upwards in areas
where the fur is coming in towards the centre from the bottom.
All important daylight bulb with me.  It’s so useful here
especially in Winter!
This is where I got to during the day.  I’ll
start again on it the following day.
Using Grey 8 on the shadow side of the face
with BV9 for some vibrant blues.
This set is available direct from Unison at
http://unisoncolour.com/exclusive-sets/emma-colbert
Using Grey27 mostly for my white and
saving pure white for the really highlighted
areas which will lift them an extra level.
 RE13 and BV7 are used as highlights on that
shadow side of the face.  Grey 10 is also used
on the shadow side so it’s quite colourful.
In addition to the Unison set I also use a Faber
Castell stick which is harder for some of the
layers underneath and really dark areas in the ears
and around the eyes.
Hope you enjoyed Odin’s progress.  Check back for more work in progress soon!