Pollyarts: Works in Progress

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Dog Portraits

JACK, Mixed breed

Oil on canvas panel
Jack most likely has some Australian Cattle dog in his ancestral tree. and perhaps even a dash of Dingo.
His brilliant white coat is sprinkled with freckles, making him a challenge to paint.

DETAIL: Click on highlighted square for a larger view

The preliminary sketch on tracing paper, ready to transfer to canvas.

The background was first blocked in roughly, and Jack was painted with blue-gray glazes to define the preliminary shapes. In this photo, the background was scumbled to clarify values. Jack was also worked with more detail, back and forth between enriching the white of his coat to the glazes in the shadows.

I step back to view the painting as a whole, and decide to warm up the overall color tone. I float on a glaze — a burnt siena/gold mixopk — and it instantly unifies the painting and adds brilliant contrast to the cool blues. I then carefully paint the patterns on the couch and pillows, staying fairly loose with my brush strokes, so the details don’t compete with Jack. One more round of white for Jack’s coat and the painting is complete.

Nellie & Elsie

Pencil on Strathmore drawing paper
This is a double portrait of two adorable French bulldogs, Nellie and Elsie. A young lady from Massachusetts
is giving it to her mother for Christmas. She took about 50 snapshots of the dogs, and I was able to
get a wonderful composite arrangement of the dogs.

The sketch above is a simple contour drawing, ready to transfer to Strathmore 4-ply drawing paper.

DETAIL: Click for a larger view

Working on Nellie. Since Nellie's coat is black, I started with her - she will set the lightest and darkest values in the portrait. I have added the slightest hint of chocolate
to make her eyes shine. Click on the above image for a larger view.

Elsie is now done. Her pied coat — black patches on white — is great fun to draw. the black patches on her face are carefully rendered, to give her face a winsome character. As I did with Nellie, I've enchanced Elsie's eyes with a layer of chocolate prismacolor pencil to bring out their bright expression. I've also added a touch of pink and coral pencils to both dogs' ears for depth and form.
Click on the above image for a larger view.

CADET, Saluki

P6" x 9.5" Strathmore 300lb. Drawing paper, Vellum finish

For this portrait of Cadet, a Saluki, I start off with my usual simple contour drawing transferred to Strathmore drawing paper. I tackle the eyes first (6B pencil), to catch Cadet’s expression and to establish the darkest dark. Once I am happy with the shape of the eyes, I darken them with the 9B pencil. I then move to the shapes around his eyes, filling them in with extremely fine pale lines of 2H and 4H pencil.

This detail shows the work around Cadet's eyes. The pencil strokes follow the direction of the hairs in his fur. The eyes' dark markings look almost like eye liner, and dramatize his intent expression.

Progress has been made quickly here — about three hours are put into finishing Cadet’s face. I also worked several shades of brown into his eyes to make them shine. I’ve started on his right ear ... I’m actually wo rking from two photos here, combining the best areas from both for his richly feathered ears. The whole range of pencils is used here for the wide spectrum of greys to blacks.