Yesterday, I spent an hour drawing with chalk in a four foot by four foot square in the hot sun. I found out about this street painting festival rather late, but still managed to score a square, lucky #7…

(with a big ‘ole oil stain in it… that blue towel was tossed shortly after I finished the painting as it was coated with grease)

I decided the night before to paint Riesling on our colorful futon to make full use of the myriad of colors available. I was afraid of running out of black, gray and white if I just did her portrait.

I had a few people stop by and ask some questions and I overhead more folks say “Look, a schanauzer!” Good to know that she was recognizable!

Here I am adding some highlights to her eyebrows after I signed it.

It was so hot that my sweat kept dripping onto my reference photo and painting! Plus, I am completely filthy.

I’m happy with my final product, especially since it was my first time participating in a street painting festival. Many folks were planning with grids and really working the pastel chalk into the ground, using hair spray as a fixative. I basically just sketched on the ground. After completing one myself, I can really appreciate the effort that goes into the beautiful works that some people create at these things!

My first challenge was to make a definite distinction between the hair on her face and her long ears. The other feature I wanted to be sure to capture was her breed-specific underbite.

After finishing her collar and tags, I felt the portrait was almost done. After much deliberation I decided that I liked it better with a plain background. I added some more detail to her left ear and added some shading under her chin on the collar.

The final product!

When I was nine, my parents finally got us the dog my siblings and I had been begging for, a little Lhasa Apso named Mai Tai. She was super overprotective and barked at ANYthing traveling past our house, but we loved her fiercely. She made it to the ripe old age of 14. I still remember coming home from college that summer with a tremendous sense of loss, something important was missing from home.

I found this photo of her the other day and scanned it in to enlarge the facial details. I wanted to try this next painting on a brown background to see if I liked the plain tinted paper behind the portrait.

Blocking in the nose and eyes were fairly straightforward, but I still had a lot of work to do on her ears.

This was my stopping point for the first day. I extended her right ear and worked a little more on the coloring around her face.

Once I decided to get serious about dog portraits, I ordered 100 business cards to help me spread the word. I used OvernightPrints.com because I had a coupon and they don’t put their logo anywhere on the materials you order from them. The shipping was a bit extreme, but the print job was “technically” free, so it evened out.

I am very pleased with both the quality of the printing job and the weight and feel of the cards themselves.

I finished my first knitting project, pup’s ribbed scarf—knit two rows, purl two rows. Riesling likes it, although her attention span for posing is short.

My next project was learning the ribbed stitch—knit two, purl two along the same row. It’s easy to get the hang of it once you know to move the yarn to the front or back of your right needle. Here’s my first swatch…

I think I’ll try a fitted cap next, then onto that dog sweater I’ve been wanting to make!

I wanted to make something cute for Riesling to wear to SchnOctoberFest this year, so I picked up some pink yarn and am in the process of knitting a scarf for her.

The knitting part was easy, but how would I feel about purling? As it turns out, I find purling almost easier than the knitting. Go figure. The hardest part is keeping the tension consistent, I can only imagine this takes a lot of practice.

This little bit took me less than half an hour, so hopefully I’ll have it done by the weekend.

I am very happy with how this turned out. There are a ton of little detailed hairs in this piece and I think I captured his serene expression well.

Terriers have such a wonderful energy about them, this little guy included. He belongs to friends of ours who live in Seattle and we love hanging out with him, his sister Brigao, and his (bigger) little brother Sebastian when we visit.

Haus is not very furry—he’s got a wiry coat—so it’s even more important to get the proportions of his head, ears, and muzzle correct in my initial drawing.

Once the general colors were added, I went back and added in some white whiskers over his face for texture… he’s an older guy, so he’s going a bit gray. I also widened his left ear and sharpened the detail on his eyes.

At this point, I can see that my next step is to shorten the dark whiskers on his muzzle, further define the area near his nose and work on the fur under his chin.

When I first started painting with chalk pastels about eight years ago, I used the cheapest pastels available at Michael’s. You know, the kind that come in all primary colors in a black plastic tray? They worked for a while, but the color selection was very limited and I wasn’t able to achieve the correct blends on my own. Then, people were asking me what brand I used when I brought in paintings for critique to the PSNC meetings and I was, frankly, too embarrassed to say.

Finally, two years ago, I acquiesced and purchased a 30 piece Rembrandt pastel set. Thanks to a 50% coupon and a gift card from my mom-in-law, it only cost me around $15.

Talk about a difference! Not only was the quality of the pigment light years better, but I feel like my paintings improved tremendously. I probably don’t own as many pastels as most of my fellow artists, but for every project I am slowly building my collection. I currently work with 53 colors of Rembrandt pastels and 3 Sennelier pastels that I got for free, 56 colors in all.

Once the background was added, I continued to work on Jeter to give him more definition, concentrating mostly on his head. Obviously the face is the most important focal point in any portrait, so I needed to make sure there was enough of a likeness there.

He’s definitely looking more furry!

I continued giving him more tufts of fur on his body and legs and added more detail around the mouth.

At this stage, I needed to figure out how detailed I wanted the grass to be. I decided to go with sharp strokes in the foreground by swiping upwards with three different shades of green. I went back into the foreground grass with some medium brown to root his feet better, as well.

I asked Eric’s opinion and he thought Jeter still looked too “soft” and wanted slightly more detail in the grassy background, so I added more strokes to the background and put in several wisps on hair on his back and legs.

The final product…