Odie’s body is finished. It took thousands of pencil strokes to do all the hairs of a Doberman coat on this large area of his neck, shoulder, and chest. This is the process:
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I’m using colored pencils over the chocolate-brown underpainting which I did at the very beginning.
The front of Odie’s neck and throat, and the top of his back are finished. I’m working in from both sides toward that very large shoulder area. In this pic I've put in the dark colors on his shoulder....browns, deep burgundy, charcoal grey...many pencil strokes built up over one-another in the direction the hairs lie in his coat.
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It takes thousands of pencil strokes with more than 20 different colors, including purple and blue. (Purple shown in my hand in this pic.) These are fine details that are hard to see in the small jpgs I share online, but the client sees it in the finished portrait.
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Odie’s body is finished. Many pencil strokes make the texture of a Doberman coat, and the lights and darks of his muscles.
Here is the whole artwork with Odie finished.
Coming into the homestretch now. All I have to do is the beach grass and the path. I'll be creating beach-grass with pencil strokes over the green underpainting the same way I made Doberman hair over the brown underpainting on Odie.
Here is the same scan of the portrait, cropped with Photoshop to 16 x 20, as Robin and Mike will see it on their wall when it’s finished. Now you can start to really see how the finished portrait will look.
"Portrait of Odie" in progress, for Robin B.
Prismacolor pencil and watercolor on Canson paper.
