‘3xWeekly’ Even More Dog Portraits

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!!!