I was asked to paint a very special portrait of Archie the motorhoming Cockapoo. My client sent me some wonderful shots of Archie but this one stood out as capturing his expression. I hope you enjoy his progression. I began to film this piece but soon into Archie’s face I had a bit of a camera malfunction so I’ve compiled this blog a little more detailed than usual listing my colours also. If you’re painting a similar breed I hope this is helpful.
Archie’s finished portrait 10″ x 12″ soft pastel on velour.
Here are the colours used in Archie’s portrait. I used mostly Unison soft pastels and some Faber Castell Pitt pencils. You can see my full colour list at the bottom of this post.
Once I got Archie sketched out onto the velour I begin by blocking in the background. I make this plain and use some directional lighting to enchance the light that’s hitting Archie. He’s sort of backlit which makes for a very tricky portrait on a light coloured dog! I would advise to avoid backlit subjects if you’re just starting out in painting. But it can make for some lovely colourful fur and work really well if you place the highlights in the right places.
Starting to layer in some of the lower layers on Archie’s top half and some of the highlights along the top of his head.
Although I tend to work from dark to light, if there are important highlighted areas, I often add these in early. It’s also nice to get an eye looking back at me.
Archie’s gaze is starting to look right now. Using lots of yellows and lilac tints in the fur, especially in the shadows. Unison A31, Light 5, A21, A19 are all very useful in the shadows along with some warmer BE10 and BE9 as the browns.
For highlights my Grey28 (white) is used, also Grey 25, BE19.
This colour of dog reflects so many colours around also and because it’s indoor lighting, this tends to heighten that effect. But I’m carefully looking for colours within the curls, building up the layers gradually.
Around the bottom of the chin area I make use of NE1 and RE11 with BE6 as my darkest brown. It looks very dark when you put it down but I’ve found that on any good pastel paper, the lighter layers will go cleanly on top. On my recent experiment with Pastelmat I found this to be the case also. Pastelmat tutorial coming soon on www.patreon.com/emmacolbertart.
Next that nose gets my attention. He has such a lovely big nose with lots of nice brown tones through it. I use mostly the soft pastel but come back in with the black pencil to neaten.
The fur under the chin is very in shadow so I make use of my lilac A31 tones in here. Using the colour wheel opposite Lilac to Yellow helps with the colour harmony in the piece.
Getting there! And I use a lot of warm Y18 and BE19 on the chest. Keeping my white highlights for the left side of Archie where the light is hitting him.
Archie’s finished portrait with our three lunatics posing. Don’t know who wanted to pose more 🙂
We’ve also been having a wonderful time around the Algarve with the three pups in the van. It’s been hot and busy, but the beaches were the highlights for sure! I think Lola agrees!
I hope you’ve enjoyed seeing Archie progress. If you haven’t already, please check out my Patreon and Youtube channels ‘Emma Colbert Art’. Just hitting subscribe on Youtube helps me keep making videos and tutorials. Thanks for visiting!
Unison Pastels COLOUR LIST:
Grey28, BE19, Grey25, BE14, Yellow18, Additional19, Additional26, BV7, Grey18, Additional31, Light5, BE9, BE10, BE16, NE1, RE11, Yellow14, Additional21, Additional38, BE6, RE9, Grey8, Dark18, BE23, BV18, BV9
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Hello Emma
Archie is stunning. Love your blog very generous to share. You have great talent. Love your work and find very inspiring as I am new to art,drawing for a year now. Watching progression is exciting to see a painting coming to life.
Thank you for sharing.
Kind regards Janice
Thanks for visiting Janice and I’m glad you find it helpful. Happy pastelling!
Best wishes,
Emma
Hi Archie looks most like our cockapoo Harvey. Only Harvey wears a red collar. When could I get two please.
Hi Roslyn,
At the moment I am taking on less commissions to make more time for creating video tutorials. Apologies for my slow reply, I didn’t see your message until now.
Thanks very much for visiting my blog and leaving me a comment!
Hello Emma, Love this dog, well love all your works.
Looks Lola is happy in the beach.;)
I ‘ ll see you.
Love your work and it’s great to see every dog appear bit by bit. You can almost see their personalities come to life in your drawings. I am kinda new to drawing or any art really, but I recently lost my little lhasa apso gizmo who was my best pal for 17yrs. Having followed some of your portraits has made me want to try to some kind of portrait of gizmo myself to remember him. What kind of paper do you use, you said velour at the start of this tutorial which has totally confused me. Lol
Looking forward to following more of your work. Thankyou in advance,
Helen.
Hi Helen, Sorry for my slow response and also for the recent loss of your pal Gizmo.
I use a couple of pastel papers. I recommend Pastelmat made by Clairefontaine. You can purchase from here: https://www.jacksonsart.com/search/?q=pastelmat&___store=jacksonsart_en&acc=087408522c31eeb1f982bc0eaf81d35f
Also I use Velour made by Hahnemühle which you can see here https://www.jacksonsart.com/search/?q=velour%2Bpastel%2Bpaper&___store=jacksonsart_en&acc=087408522c31eeb1f982bc0eaf81d35f
Both are quite different but great for pastel and pets.
You can see a video I made about my favourite paper velour at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nqyhf4BNf2s&t=9s. Also have a look at all my playlists on my Youtube. There is lots of help there for getting started in pastel, and lots of longer tutorials also.
Best wishes,
Emma
Thank you for sharing progress. I’m in awe of pastels at the moment as I’m in middle of an enormous project/commission I have to finish by 1 May. Love your pastel pic! Watch this space soon…
You are amazingly talented, Emma. I’ve watched a number of your YouTube videos as they are so informative and inspiring.
Thank you!
Hi, is this going to be a tutorial as I am a member and I cant wait as I have a dog just like Archie :))
Hi Shirley,
This piece was not filmed as it was before the days of me filming everything and turning it into tutorials. I hope I get another cockapoo or labradoodle soon as they have great fur to paint. Pretty close are some of my spaniel tutorials as they show you how to create curls.