I was asked to do another demo at Jerry’s Artarama this past Sunday and although I didn’t take any photos, the portrait is almost done, so I’ll have her up soon. And last week, a woman contacted me about doing a pastel portrait of her dog after finding my Pups in Pastel website. I also volunteered to head up a group paint at the Pastel Society of North Carolina this past Saturday. So, I have painted more in the last three days than I have in a month and I am loving it!

Getting a painting started of my brother-in-law’s cockapoo, Holly, for my live demo tomorrow at Jerry’s Artarama from 1-4pm. I plan on finishing this one and starting one of my aunt-in-law’s golden retriever, Katie.

I will be one of a handful of artists doing a live pastel demo at Jerry’s Artarama on Sunday, August 31st from 1-4pm. So come out and say hi if you’re interested in my dog portraits.

Check out my new website for my pet portrait business!

All pricing and contact info is here.

I am really happy with how this portrait turned out, what a cutie!

Ok, where were we?

I added some more detail to his face and some texture to the fur on his body. I also extended his back end a little bit.

I normally don’t like backgrounds in my work, but Lucky is going to look pretty silly curled up on blank space so I’ll need to at least suggest a solid surface beneath him. I decided to go with a mere suggestion of the couch, in order to let the dog be the main focus.

The last step will be to finalize some detail to the ears, fine strokes of fur to the body and face, and add whiskers.

After I added all the white patches, I filled in the rest of the body and head with a reddish-brown pastel.

As the face is the most important component of a portrait, I started adding detail there first. The original nose placement made the face too long, so I moved it up some. I had the right eye in the correct place, but needed to move the the left eye down.

I’ve got a good bit of detail done in the face, but after looking at my reference photo I can see that I need to extend his body in the back a little bit. I also want to work on making his tucked front leg a little more convincing before I start adding the final details.

For my next dog portrait, I am working on our friend’s adorable chihuahua, Lucky. He’s about seven pounds of pure love.

Eric took this photo of him on the arm of their couch the first time we went to visit them after they moved to Jacksonville.

Once I have the correct outline using soft vine charcoal, I started adding white. At this point, I am just trying to get the placement of his head, legs and tail correct.

To paint large areas like this I lightly fill in the area with pastel and then blend (with my fingers) into the paper. For spots of pure white I may have to go over the area a few times, especially since I am using black paper. I’ve tried other methods of blending (brushes, tortillons, etc) but nothing seems to work as well as my hands.

He’s already starting to look pretty realistic! Tomorrow I will continue painting with brown pastels and start working on his face and ears.

I have two paintings in a group show with the Pastel Society of North Carolina at The Upstairs Art Gallery in western NC this month. I was going to submit one dog portrait and one landscape, but the organizer requested more figurative work because most of the entries were landscape and still life. So, Riesling the Wise and Dog Days of Summer were carted off to Blowing Rock late last week. The show runs through November 19.

This Saturday was SchnOctoberFest and I managed to give away several business cards as well as help raise money for the NC Schnauzer Rescue.

I was pleased to see quite a few raffle tickets in my bin! They also added a link to me from their contributor’s website, so now folks can find me through there as well.