Painting Process

                Watercolour dog painting process:

Hello all!  I'm back with another dog painting process :)

I was pleasantly surprised and SUPER ecstatic when my last post got 90+ upvotes!  OH MY GOODNESS!!!  Thank you all for the support and positive feedback!  I appreciate it so much!

I hope you don't mind me making another dog painting progress post.  I want to improve my pet painting skills so I've been painting more dogs and cats lately.

As always (for portraits) I start off with making a sketch in my sketchbook.  I used a reference photo for the sketch.  I wasn't super happy with the sketch and thought the eyes were too high on the face... so when I was tracing my sketch I just moved the tracing paper up to trace the eyes once I got the face outline done, then transferred it onto my watercolour paper.

First layer.  I chose to paint wet-on-wet so that I can achieve seamless colour transitions and lost edges that often exceed the outline of my subject.  I used alizarin crimson, raw sienna, and manganese blue hue for this painting.

On the second layer I started to work on the eyes, nose/muzzle, and adding definition to the ears.

Third layer.  Continued to work on to the eyes, ears, and nose.  I added more colour to the background, sticking with the three colours I chose.  When you continue the same colours in multiple areas of a painting, it helps with harmony and unity within the piece.

I had added one more layer to the face to build up the shadows and started to darken the eyes.

I didn't like how the eyes looked, so I lifted some of the raw sienna and was happy with the outcome.  By lifting some of the colour from the eyes, I achieved a glassy and more dimensional appearance. 

Added the pupils to the eyes, but I had a hard time getting the right "look"... so I had to do some more lifting and repainting.  Also did some lifting on the chin and fur around the ears.  I just painted a suggestion of the neck because I wanted the focus to be on the face/head.  

Once I was finished, I added some white whiskers with a gel pen.  That white gel pen sure is handy!

I hope you enjoyed this post!  Please feel free to give feedback and/or ask me questions.

Thank you for stopping by,

Cheyenne