I’ve been working on a pet portrait this week of a gorgeous Husky. The client provided me with an excellent photo with lovely dappled light and a gorgeous soft chair backdrop.
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| The finished painting, pastel on velour 14″x18″ |
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| I’ve got my rough outline on the velour. I’m trying out this deep yellow colour as the picture has a real warmth to it even though the colours in the Husky can be quite cool. I’m hoping this will keep it warm. |
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| Starting with background and working forward. You can see how I build up the tones of the brown chair. The chair in my photo reference has a dotted pattern on it and I discussed keeping it plain to let Hollie stand out more as it was quite busy. I hope the tone of the seat will just provide a nice surround to Hollie’s shades. |
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| I want to keep the lightest highlights in the painting for the really sunlit areas which are only speckled here and there. |
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| That’s all the light areas and the rest of the brown tones smoothed in with my fingers. I’m using mostly big soft Unison pastels. For the blackest areas I love using a Faber Castell black stick as it’s really dark. |
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| This is how I’ve begun to build up the fur. Husky fur is so thick it’s going to take a few layers to get that effect. I lay down the darkest first following the flow of the fur. |
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| I like to work my way gradually down as it means I can lean while I work. Also, the way the fur layers up, it’s advantageous for other reasons too in getting this effect. I know that’s not the way a lot of artists work as you can’t see all your values but I like this way and think if something works well for you it doesn’t matter if it’s the classically trained way or not. I have also made sure that my initial line drawing is pretty accurate in terms of the proportions so I’ve got those guides there to keep my proportions from going off during this stage. |
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| At this stage I’ve got a good Husky face but it’s not quite Hollie yet. The tweaking stage for the expression comes next. I’ll go back over this with blenders and a few choice colours of pastel pencil to neaten and define the hairs. |
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| That back section of the dog is interesting as most of her is in shadow yet there is a sunlit stripe on her back end. This will be the brightest area in the painting. Sometimes I find it useful to spot the darkest area and the lightest point in a painting before you start and judge everything off them as you go. |
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| Although I’m using the pastel to pretty much cover the paper entirely I’m going to let some of this orange shine through the coat in small speckles. |
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| Bringing the fur forward with lighter shades |
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| Close up section of Hollie’s front. This shows the dots of the yellow paper which I left showing. The other shades are yellows light blues and violets. The lightest highlight colour I used was a Unison Grey 28 which is great as it’s warmer than pure white. |
Hope you enjoyed the progress, check back soon for more 🙂