Here’s Otto, captelaine’s lucky draw dog portrait.
It was a bit of a struggle doing this one. I’m going through a bad patch with my art at the moment, and doing a lucky prize painting would perhaps be a way of getting me out of the art doldrums. I needed some motivation and direction so I decided to fall back to what I love doing, namely portraits of people and pets.
So I’ll share my struggles so you can see how I puddle around trying to make something that looks like a dog painting. I started this on top of a failed watercolour with a coating of gesso over.
Next I defined a few features with black ink, then a bit of watercolour.
Watercolour wasn’t working too well on this surface so I started adding gouache. Being thicker and drier gouache seemed to be a better choice. I was unsure about the background, scrubbing different colours around at this point.
Otto wasn’t looking too bad at this stage but the background was still giving me a headache. This is where I put the two images side by side to try to work outside where I’m going wrong.
I gave up at this stage, ready to bin the lot and give up painting forever, and went off to bed in disgust.
In the morning I took another look at it and decided it might work with a different background. Otto seems like a gutsy type of dog needing a strong background so I painted over the lot with burnt sienna gouache.
I think it suits him much better. I hope you like him Elaine π
Now, I might take a break from painting for a while and go and do some gardening or something……. or I might not π
Beautiful painting.You really captured the dog’s expression and the dog himself. I did not enter the drawing because I also paint dog portraits and have painted my own. I loved being able to see how you progressed. Very ,very nice portrait. How can she not like it?
Thanks again Judy. Your comments are always heartwarming.
I LOVE it Ros… sorry it gave you a struggle but it turned out fabulous. I like the dark background very much and you captured Otto’s expressive face very well. Thank you again for painting my Otto dog.
Iβm happy you like it. Every painting is a struggle for me Elaine π
I love the w-i-p photos and your thoughts. Wonderful to see how you solved several issues. The final painting is a treasure π
Thanks so much Meera. Iβm glad I persevered as it very nearly ended up in the bin π