These are some of the stages of Amber's oil portrait...a tad out of order because I've been trying to figure this blogging thing out now for 4 hours and can't get them in order!
The first step was drawing with paint and brush, and I experimented with drippy washes on background...not very successful, must learn how to drip paint....
I then refined the drawing with darker paint, and brought in the shadows. Note how much the drawing of the ears will change, they were very challenging and it is critical to get them right, so that they are 'Amber's ears', same thing goes for every part of her, really. I then painted the eyes and started the nose.
I laid in color for the background and continued on the ears, note how much smaller at the base the left one is...bad! I also noticed the right eye was too small and too far to the right... REALLY bad!
With the new 'right' eye and the refined ears, I worked on the shadows on left side of face, popped in the blue collar and started the base color on her body.
This image should follow the next one
but, I couldn't move it and kept deleting other stages/images so, now I give up with dealing with the difficulty of creating this blog!
Keen observation on your part will show you the progress from this stage to the previous one, as you can see, I worked the details of the face fur and muzzle, and started the body.
And here is the final oil painting on canvas. I would guess, as I didn't record my time this time, that it took around 40 hours over a period of 2 months.
I added all the top layer details; whiskers, another thin glaze on the right eye highlight, the dark line around her, which I've never done but do like how it 'pops her out' from the background.
I then put a layer of 'Rose Madder' red on the background to soften the line's edge while it was still wet.
Voila! She's quite complete although, I still see a few details I may tweek.
Thank you for visiting.
