Someone to Watch over Me - a Beautiful Process

Meet King. A good friend of mine asked if I could do a painting for a friend of hers. The woman who had King had been through  some rough times, and Lynn wanted to give this to her as a loving memory of King. King's owner wants to hang the painting in her newborn daughter's bedroom as her guardian angel, hence the name of the painting.

My drawing

I wanted to start with a color study, as I was going outside my usual territory. The colors and mood were to be light, and I do have a penchant for the dark and dramatic. I started with a wet in wet all-over wash using quin. rose, quin. burnt orange and cobalt blue. I dried that, and then mixed a blue-grey for his coat color and applied that w/w.

A bit more w/w with a warm and cool grey.

The eyes and nose, again w/w, using orange, pink and indanthrone.

More work on eyes and nose.

This morning I had a good idea for the background. I wanted to use a "lost and found" technique so King would seem to emerge from the paper. I scrumbled some orange, pink and cobalt blue, keeping the warmer colors up at his head. I'm not sure if I am finished yet, but I must admit I really like how the painting looks. I wish all my paintings came onto the board this easily - mind you, I did spend weeks thinking about it and planning.

The original drawing is 15 x 11 inches, and the color study is 11 x 7 inches. I wonder if I can create the larger painting as well as the color study???

Thank you so much for dropping by!!

So ... Long Time No See ... or ... Works in Progress

This was #2. There was too much of the quin. gold - didn't like the overall effect. ONWARD ...

Start of #3.  I used quin. burnt orange instead of the gold. I also used my usual animal palette of quin. violet and indanthrone blue, with some permanent rose and cobalt blue for the tongue.

Started to get some of his local color on.

More black ...

... and still more black ...

I masked out the logo in the background, and did several w/w washes  with orange, violet and dark blue.

Mask was removed, and the logo is there just enough to be noticed but not to overwhelm.

I visited the friend who commissioned the work, and she loved his expression but said he needed more black, so more black it is. I think it's almost there, just a bit of tweaking and probably one more overall w/w application of black. I considered using a dry brush technique, but was afraid that it would give a scratchy look, so all has been done wet-in-wet.

I was coming home from teaching last week, and thankfully had my camera. The girls were out in the field, so I stopped to take some photos. She looks like the epitome of the contented cow here.

Some goslings

Another view

Apologies for being away for a long time. I've been painting, but nothing I really like, and I'm trying to get more sketching done, too. And of course, there's Bruno. We've been doing more trail riding [something he is not accustomed to doing] so I am taking my time. His idea of rebelling is to stop dead and turn to stone, so I have been basically just waiting him out. From the saddle I tell him, "Bruno, I have ALLLL day, but you will miss lunch and snacks and dinner ... " It seems to work :) He LOVES his food! So other than the balking and a minor spook or two, we are doing well.

Thank you so much for dropping by!