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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.

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.