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The expression on Scout’s face will make-or-break the barn hunt pose, the third figure in a triple portrait of Scout. 1 Doing Scout’s forehead. His smooth head that makes you want to kiss it. The little creases in his white blaze on his forehead are extremely important: tiny details but they show his intense concentration. 2 It took me a while to do those shapes in his white blaze. Very slow and painstaking like doing an eye, with a glance at the reference photo every couple

In my previous post I described how I used the grey paper color, which I had masked off when I made the green and gold underpainting, to give me the right base color for Scout’s black and white coat. Check out how I use that for Scout’s front leg in this post. And how I’m starting to utilize the gold underpainting now to make the straw. 1 It took quite a while to do all of Scout’s black coat on his body. There are more pencil colors in a Border collie’s black coat than you

I’m working on Scout's barn-hunt figure, the third depiction of Scout in this triple portrait. In these pics you can see why I masked off the figures to protect the grey paper when I made the underpainting for the grass and straw backgrounds (green, and gold/brown). I wanted to utilize that grey paper in creating Scout’s coat in all three figures. 1 - Starting with Scout’s beautiful big fluffy tail! 2 Scout’s black coat is made up of many shades of grey….very little actual b

I’m not going to add the colored pencil grass details around the Frisbee figure until I finish the barn-hunt figure. The backgrounds of those two scenes - straw and grass - will have to blend together at the edges. Since the portrayals of Scout are the most important thing, I want to finish the barn hunt figure first. Then create both the straw and grass backgrounds around the two action figures. Any background scene I put in has to enhance the figures, not the other way arou

Continuing Scout’s triple portrait. I’ve moved on to the second figure, an action pose - Scout running fast with his Frisbee. This one poses a dilemma: a blurry reference photo. Most people know me for my highly detailed, realistic style. I solved the challenge of using a reference photo that doesn't show any detail, by working in a different, more impressionistic style. The close-up of the pencil strokes in Pic 4 shows what I mean. A professional artist friend of mine often