I’m coming into the homestretch now. All that’s left to do is the beach grass and the path.
Yesterday I shared a post showing how I made the hairs of Odie’s coat with thousands of colored-pencil strokes over a brown underpainting. I’m doing the same thing to make beach-grass and plants with colored pencils over green underpainting. I’ve finished the part above the path. Below the path is what the underpainting looks like, no colored pencil applied over it yet.
When we were designing the portrait and thinking about the background, Robin told me she and Mike rent a beach house every year and take Odie. Dogs are not allowed on the beach so they sit together and watch the sunset from the dunes...then after the sun goes down and the people have left they take Odie down the path to run on the beach. That setting and those fun beach memories are meaningful to Robin. This is the exact scene they see from the dune where they watch the sunsets, with the path of packed “white sugar sand” to the beach.
A close-up of the pencil work on the dunes:
