Cooper portrait in progress 4 - A copper-colored nose

This progression of a day’s work in the studio helps show how I construct a canine portrait.

Three scans of today’s work…creating the nose, lips, and muzzle of a copper-colored dog. The captions describe my thought processes.

1

To begin, I added the back corner of Cooper's lip, and that was where I started bringing in some of the more pink and peach tones. Outlined the dark edge of his lips and nose, so I could add that central “split” that runs up the front of a dog’s nose, preparing for doing the “nose leather” portion. Those are the landmarks I need to make sure his nose looks symmetrical. 

2

There were a lot of interesting colors in Cooper’s nose. I layered and blended golds, greys, peach, mauve, red-orange, and of course a variety of browns, and black in the nostrils. 

I’ve never done a Vizsla’s nose before. It was a bit pinker than his coat, but not as pink as the nose of a red Doberman, or as grey or mauve as many brown dogs. It was surprisingly “orange”. It really is what the AKC refers to as “self-colored” — the color of his coat. 

It surprised me, all the colors in that copper-colored Vizsla nose. 

3

Pencil colors I was using for Cooper’s face are on the left. As I started working on his nose and lips, I added pencils that have more pink and purple in them to my "working colors", on the right. Almost all the colors you see here were used to create his nose. 

4

With the lips and nose “enclosing” the space, I began filling in the front portion of his muzzle between lips and nose. That’s my least favorite part of a portrait. It’s challenging to get all those rows of little pits that the whiskers come out of, without making them too exaggerated. It really is a strange collection of shapes and lights/darks in a small area. That same challenge will continue while filling in the rest of the area still unfinished on his face. 

🎨 Prismacolor pencil on “Flannel Grey” Canson Mi-Teintes paper, 11 x 14 inches.

Portrait of Cooper

Commissioned by Rina Carrillo as a birthday gift for her partner Brandon Hedrick.