This painting is of my brother’s first dog Bart. I’ve painted him before and had already prepared a black, white & grey canvas to glaze. Planned on finishing this in half a day… ha! It’s been over three weeks and after MULTIPLE glazing layers it’s not finished… but I’m done. With every new layer the portrait changes and could probably do with more light and shade but I’ve truly lost interest.
I’ve included a black and white copy as well. In my opinion it looks nicer, but that’s after adjusting the brightness and contrast.
My friend posted a picture of her dog Totoro on Facebook and he is absolutely adorable. Hopefully Lynn will think I’ve done an o.k. likeness. I made a few sketches in graphite, then a quick drawing in soft pastel, then another in oil pastel with colour. Although there was a lot of initial prep work, this painting didn’t come easily.
The final portrait was done in acrylic on 8” x 10” board without tracing. There are a lot of things that could be fixed on this painting, but I'm never going to get 3 a week done at this rate.
In hindsight, it might have been better to do a larger painting with less detail…maybe next time.
Hadn't started painting and it was Wednesday, but at least I knew my subject… more of Moose. After looking at the cat painting by Hashim Akib in the ‘Vibrant Acrylics’ book, I decided to incorporate those colours in a Moose painting. Well to begin with it didn’t look like it was working but after the second day it was much better.
Moose was proving to be a good subject, hence the next painting. This time I started with purple, my sister-in-law's favourite colour. This one came out pretty good as well. Hey this is going good…so far.
For the last painting this week I went back to my old standby…Lenny. I really miss him, he was a truly fantastic friend and companion. The photo was one of my favourites so I wanted to see if I could recreate the same feeling with acrylics on paper. The results were really good…I don’t want to brag but I’m getting much better at this. Let’s hope I can keep it going.
Wow, so glad I didn’t go with ‘a painting a day’; '3xWeekly is hard enough. With family obligations, my two young dogs, house work, part time job, painting, photographing, blogging and last but not least social media… it’s Wednesday and I haven’t started my three paintings yet. Feeling a little overwhelmed, I know it’s my own doing but none the less.
Each week an image must be chosen, then cropped for composition, then printed (that’s always a disaster), then traced (think I’ll hold off on drawing for now), then and only then painted. Let’s hope these new Atelier paints I bought at 'All About Art' do the trick :)).
This week’s first painting is of my dog Lenny and it's proving difficult; getting used to the Atelier paints is not easy. Even though blending with Atelier paints is supposed to be a walk in the park...it's a problem for me. The paints are thinner and the spray bottle seems to leave big droplets that can’t be blended. I used the technique of loading lots of colours on the brush, which I learned from Marylin Allis and the overall painting is o.k.. They eyes could probably be better but I’ll save that for another painting.
Again using the techniques learned from 'All About Art' artist Marylin Allis, I painted a quick picture of my friend's dog Jessie. Although this one is more of a caricature, I really liked the results. My friend liked it as well and asked me to send her the painting. My first commission... well sort of.
My final painting of the week is not the best, but Moose, in my opinion, has difficult colouring. At least I was able to try out different techniques and brushes. I’m going to paint Moose again next week with some regular acrylics. His face is really fantastic, but the reds, browns and oranges are challenging. My original painting was on A4 paper, but I've cropped it square in this photo and it looks better.
Well at least one painting was a success!!!
In 'Painting Daily' Carol talks of letting a painting go if it’s not working; this week I’m finding that difficult. Maybe it’s because my friend asked me to paint her dog, or maybe it’s because it doesn't look right. So far three days are gone and instead of letting go…I’m procrastinating. In her book, Carol explains that if you don't like something it could be the composition; not sure that's it. It's probably the crap drawing. In my haste to paint, I haven’t really worked on getting the image drawn correctly and it’s cost me 3 days. So with a heavy heart I'm calling it quits on this painting. Next time more time needs to be dedicated to drawing; or for expediency the image could be traced.
Previously, I painted my brother’s dog in an abstract style and wasn’t impressed. This time it was going to be more photo realistic...well that was the plan. Using cyan blue, process magenta and white I built up the colour to try and reflect the hair. It didn’t work, and after obsessing over it for a while, I tried adding some pastel...but that didn’t work either. With four days already lost… it has to be deemed finished.
My Samoyed's were such fantastic dogs it’s sad that they are no longer with me, but I have some great photos to paint from. This was going to be a quick painting but I did spend two days on it. Even if the painting could be improved, this week’s lesson learned has to be… don’t obsess and let it go. I will live to paint another day and hopefully keep learning.
Feeling good, last week my first four dog paintings came out better than expected and I'm really excited to continue. After searching like crazy for my next photo, I came across a really old picture of my dog Lenny. For a big dog he lays in funny positions. With leftover paint from the previous weeks' paintings I had already painted a few sheets of A4 acrylic paper with yellow ochre background colour.
The first painting came out really nice, I used process cyan, magenta and process yellow to create the dark tones and really loved the outcome. At first the background didn’t look good, so I took a pallet knife and scraped in a few extra colours.
Didn't like my first try at the second painting; the dog was painted in blues and greens. Thought the tones might be too similar, but that was also true for the first photo. Then decided it might be the background, so I put orange & yellow over the magenta and outlined part of the dog in black. Think it's much better now.
The third painting was inspired by an old photo of my cat. This photo was always one of my favourites and thought it would look nice on A3 paper. For this painting I went with a blue background against a white/magenta cat. In my opinion, this one really came out nice. No more experimenting with this image… for now that is.
Really starting to feel more confident, 3xweekly so far is working out. Even though each painting isn't perfect... I'm learning!
This painting is of my brother’s first dog Bart. I’ve painted him before and had already prepared a black, white & grey canvas to glaze. Planned on finishing this in half a day… ha! It’s been over three weeks and after MULTIPLE glazing layers it’s not finished… but I’m done. With every new layer the portrait changes and could probably do with more light and shade but I’ve truly lost interest.
