Published: March 27, 2021 | Last edited: March 30, 2021
This painting was a commission that I got in the middle of November. It was going to be a Christmas present so it needed to be finished and delivered by the middle of December... that really doesn't give me much time to complete a painting, and I was seriously sceptical if I could make it in such short order. I advise people to make commission orders well in advance if the painting is going to be something like a birthday or Christmas present just to be sure it gets done in time just in case I already have commissions to work on (and so I don't start stressing out over the deadlines *_* ). But, I didn't have a crammed schedule this year, so I took this painting on.
I put a lot of focus into this painting and I worked on it nearly every day for over a month, and to my relief, I was able to get it done in time... even a few days early! I have a tendency to take several months to finish a commission painting, so I was very proud of how quickly I was able to finish this one, and I was elated with how it turned out. It's definitely one of my favourites! Just this one painting has helped me learn and improve so much.
This is the finished sketch before I put any paint down. The drawing was a bit tricky and I had to make several adjustments along the way. This is the first time I made a painting with two dogs in it. I've painted two cats in one painting before, but not dogs. Once the drawing was done, it was time to add colour. I had asked what the recipient's favourite colour was and it's a light teal blue. Fantastic! I have the perfect paint for that! I love teal also, but I don't always find uses for it in paintings. I thought about how to incorporate teal into this painting. I decided that it would be lovely in the background and as accents.
The dogs were mostly white/cream with only their ears and muzzles darkly coloured -- that saved me time not having to paint the whole dogs a dark colour which would have required a lot more layers.
My first step was to tone the dogs with raw sienna (and to paint a light layer of grey on the nose/ears) so that I could see where the fur edges were in order to paint the background around the dogs -- I do this instead of having dark pencil lines around the entire dogs that could show through the paint in the end. After I loosely paint the base and edges, I go around and define and carve out the shapes and boarders with the background colours. The negative painting technique hasn't always been my strongest skill, but I think I made strides of improvement while making this painting.
I worked with the teal colour in the background as well as some magenta and another blue-grey mix. I can't remember why I chose to use magenta, but man, I think it worked very well! The teal and magenta are sort of complimentary colours, so I suppose that's why I intuitively chose magenta. Oh, and also I thought that since the dogs were going to be a warm yellow tone, I would use the magenta to mix some violet to compliment the warm tones. I initially used a flat grey to paint their ears and muzzle/nose, but I was disenchanted with the lack of colour and how bland it looked... so I went a little rouge and decided to add more colours and do a vibrant underpainting. I didn't know how much colour I could get away with, but I knew that adding some vibrant colour would make the finished painting much more lively and dynamic. What can I say, I love colour and colour is a big part of my style/brand, so I kept some of that extra colour in the painting ;)
I continued to add more layers to the painting. Slowly perfecting the edges of the fur (which was time consuming and a tad frustrating at times) by adding paint, lifting paint, softening edges, and then adding more paint. I decided to do something a little different and add some splashy splatters of that teal blue all over the painting... I usually just keep my backgrounds smooth and simple, but this time I was feeling adventurous, I suppose. When I was finally satisfied with the background and the fur edges, I added some white gouache to further the look of fluffy/wispy fur and to fix some edges that I couldn't get right with just lifting/scrubbing. I also added some white gouache for the fur around the eyes and for the eye-sparkle, and a tiny bit on the noses. In the reference photo that I was provided, the eyes were barely visible, and what was visible just looked black and without any highlights. Initially I was going the paint the eyes how they looked in the photo; I thought that I could make it work thanks to all the fur that was in front of, and obstructing the eyes, but my Dad (who is often my "fresh eyes" and left-brain art critique, and which I've grown to greatly appreciate his input) said that I could do better than the minimal visual information that was in the photo. He said that I should try to add some brown for the dogs' irises and add some highlight/sparkle so that the eyes looked more lively and like you can actually look into their eyes instead of looking into blackholes. I wasn't sure how much I'd be able to do since this was already late into the painting process, but I gave my Dad's suggestions a try. I did my best and what do you know, I think I was able to make it worked! I'm glad that I listened to my Dad's suggestion. Thanks Dad!
Here's some close-ups of their sniffers :) You can see some of that vibrant pink/purple/blue peaking through the neutral layers... I really loved how that looked!
Great job on the painting Chey with fabulous colour choices and your write up paints an additional painting in our minds of your thoughts and methods. Keep up the great work!! : )