WIP Update 5 - Lab

My husband happened to read my blog yesterday and yelled at me for even considering starting this portrait over. Of course, he's not an artist and doesn't realize some of the problems and complexities but many times he's right.

In this case, he suggested a background and also suggested playing around with the color in my graphics program. So, I did. I know the wall color of my client is a tannish, grayish, pinkish taupe color and I know the dog is so light (actually lighter than I have portrayed her and I intend to rectify that) that I need a darker background color. Do any of you have any suggestions for a good color to use?

I also played more with the Richeson sticks and realize that the PastelMat needs a lot of pastel in order to build enough of a base for blending. Before that base is built, about the only way to blend is with another pastel. Even so, the pencil marks are still not covering well and it's still difficult to layer the lighter colors over the darker ones. I still have more work to do on this so please think good thoughts for me!

So, it looks as if I'll continue with this and hope I don't overwork it or otherwise mess it up. If I do, well, then I guess I'll start over at that time.

Whew!

I know it's been a while since I was last here but I've been swamped by various projects. Some have been in the making for a while and I'll let you know about those when they're ready to be announced.

In the meantime, I've started a new dog portrait. This one is very special since 1) it's for a wonderful person 2) it's a lovely dog and 3) I'm using my new PastelMat for the first time on a commission!

I'd planned to do give you a full WIP, but, as usual, I got started and forgot to scan the basic sketch! However, I didn't get very far before I remembered so there's very little done.

In this wip, I hope to better learn the properties of the PastelMat, of course, but I also hope to learn more about mixing colors in pastel. I've been told that an artist really needs the exact color they want to lay down as mixing colors isn't really feasible in this medium. For this dog, I don't think the exact colors are available as I think I have just about every "dog" or "cat" color made and they're still not quite right!

Also, I'm working from some relatively bad reference photos. Well, the photo showing the body of the dog isn't too bad but the eyes were totally flashed out in that photo to the point where even the area around them was badly affected. I had another photo showing the eyes pretty well so I ended up using the one photo for the actual dog but am using the second photo to sketch in and paint the eyes. It looks right so far so I'm excited to see how it all works out!

I'm also excited about using the PastelMat again. I said in an earlier post that I didn't think I wanted to like it very much because it wasn't available here in the US. Well, I just found out that it is available here now! I don't know if any other art stores will carry it, but Dakota Pastels is now offering it to their customers. Having it available in the US may not entice me to use it more though as it's still a very expensive support! Hope my customers appreciate the fact that they're getting the best! lol

More later - let me get back to work on this so I'll have an update to post tomorrow!