I would recommend using a proportional divider to check measurements if you can print out your reference to actual size. If you don’t want to use a grid, you can do a freehand drawing. It’s also less intimidating than painting on a bright white canvas. A toned canvas can aid in matching values more accurately. The reason for toning the canvas is to not have the bright white from the canvas add too much contrast to the colors as I block them in. I added my grid back on and quickly sketched Duke in charcoal. I put a light wash on the canvas and allowed it to dry. Since I was starting over with the sketch, I decided to tone the canvas by mixing ivory black with yellow ochre and thinning it with Gamsol. The second sketch looks much better and the toned canvas will be easier to work on. A couple of quick conversations on the phone or via email can make all the difference. It’s important to work with your client so they are feeling good about the direction the painting is going.Īrt is emotional and hard to put into words sometimes. This would be perfectly acceptable and make a larger than life statement, which the chihuahua’s human may love. Chihuahuas, however, would probably prefer to be painted to the size of their personality on a canvas at least 36″ wide. If I were painting a tiny dog such as a chihuahua, I would probably start with a smaller canvas such as an 8″x10″ or 9″x12″ and keep the head close to life-size as well. If you see a mistake early on, it’s best to address it right away. If I had continued and gotten halfway done with the portrait, I would have been in big trouble. Since I was just at the sketch stage, it wasn’t a big deal to start over. It could simply be that although I wanted to capture Duke’s personality, the portrait still needed to fit into the family home and have a little more of a formal feel to it. I don’t know if there is a reason for this or not, but if I figure it out I’ll let you know. However, for some reason when the canvas size makes the portrait close to real-life size, it feels uncomfortable with the head too big. I did a painting like that with my dog Eddie, which you can see at the end of this article.ĭuke’s head is just too big on the canvas.
There are instances where you could go much larger than actual size on a huge canvas and that doesn’t feel weird. It’s OK if it’s slightly larger, but I could tell this first drawing was too large. When doing portraits on a larger canvas such as 16″x20″, I generally like to keep the size of the head as close to actual size in real life. I lengthened Duke’s legs and extend the image at the top of the photo after I decided to resize Duke for the painting. In the reference photo above, you can see where I altered the image on the top and bottom. The next day it was still bothering me, so I wiped off the charcoal and decided to start over. I sat with it for a day to see how I felt about it. While the composition looked great on my computer screen, when I drew it actual size on canvas, Duke’s head looked much too large. It all seemed like it was going well until I actually drew out the sketch with vine charcoal on the canvas. I don’t always use a grid, but to move things along more quickly I use it to help keep the proportions accurate early on. I sized the original photo proportionally to fit a 16″x20″ canvas and added a simple grid. The image below is the final reference photo. I was given several images of Duke to work from and we chose the image where his personality seemed to shine through the most. Duke is the Chief Morale Officer at Braden Heidner Lowe & Associates, so I was feeling the pressure painting such a high ranking business dog. This portrait of Duke was commissioned as a birthday present for one of his devoted humans. Preparing For Painting A Senior Dog Portrait I’m working on it! Until then, keep reading. The video link will appear below but until it premieres, I’ll keep the portrait of a pug video in its place.
#Dog portrait painter how to
If you prefer to watch videos on how to paint dogs, I’ll have one coming out soon demonstrating how to paint this German Shorthaired Pointer named Duke.
#Dog portrait painter skin
When you paint a senior dog portrait, having a plan for painting the white fur on their face as well as the changing skin on their nose can make your portrait a success. When painting portraits of older people, you need to take into account how to paint wrinkles, grey hair and changing facial features. But these sweet older faces are so rewarding to paint for a variety of reasons. A senior dog portrait painting has a few unique challenges.
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