Scout portrait in progress 10 - Using the paper color

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 might think. I used almost all of Prismacolor’s greys, warm and cool. And of course black. 

2

Now I’m on to the left front leg. That’s where I’ll really use the grey of the paper to give me the color I need. 

The white front leg is more shadowed than the white ruff on his neck. I used white pencil for the ruff. For the forelegs I’m using pale grey pencils (French greys, which are warm, and cool greys) to make some strokes of hair, but mostly it’s the color and value of the paper itself that is showing there. 

3

This close-up is a great example of how I use paper color to do a lot of work. 

You can see it as the shadows between the strands of hair on his foreleg, and notice how much paper I leave showing in places.

Annette commented:

“Oh my...I never would have guessed that the grey is actually the paper coming through between the hair strokes! It looks so much like his coat I thought you had used pencil - a fine balancing and use of medium!"

4

As I am doing his feet, I’m starting to put in some of the details of the straw around them.

Note the straws around his feet and under his chest.

As I finish the edges of Scout’s coat, I add the straws that are overlapping or adjoining those edges. My gold underpainting makes that easy. It gives me an “under-color” the same way that pale grey gave me the under-color for the pencil strokes of hair on Scout’s front leg. It saves me work of trying to cover up the grey paper with golden/yellow/orange/brown tones. That was the whole reason for making an underpainting for the grass around the Frisbee figure, and the straw around the barn-hunt figure. 

Making the details of grass blades and straw blades will be easy with colored pencil strokes on those green and gold base colors. 

5

This is how the whole artwork looks now. 

Scout’s barn hunt figure is starting to come to life. 

6

I slowed down and became particularly focused when I got to Scout’s face. This is where I stopped for the day. That look of intense concentration is very important to the barn hunt pose, and to capture his involvement in the work he’s doing. That will “make or break” this barn hunt figure. I’ll continue on that tomorrow when I’m fresh.

Triple portrait of “Scout”.

Scout’s Chase RATM RATCh ThD

Commissioned by Annette Riehle.

🎨 Prismacolor pencil and acrylic wash on “Flannel Grey” Canson Mi-Teintes paper

20 x 26 inches.

Scout’s barn hunt reference photo is by Jackie Singer.