I’m finally getting down to the wire with this portrait. The ferns on the left are finished.
1
Working my way down to the bottom corner.
I get scribbley at this point. Subject is in sharp focus, meticulous detail….the farther I get out to the edges/corners of the landscape, the looser I get with the pencil-work. After driving myself crazy for weeks with all the tight detail…I will just scribble my way across the bottom with big scribbley scribbles! 😁
2
This last fern went really fast. Compared to the slow, painstaking work of the others.
Just a few fast scribbles in the right place with the right colors.
3
Everything to the left of the bridge is finished.
Shasta looks like she is floating, because there is no shadow under her to tie her to the surface she’s on. That’s one of the things an artist has to know to make a scene look realistic when putting a subject from one reference photo (a dog on it’s front lawn) into a scene from a different reference photo (footbridge and trail through a forest).
I just have to finish the ferns and leaves on the right side. Then I’ll finish the planks of the bridge last — a few horizontal pencil strokes to indicate the gaps between planks, and add the shadow beneath Shasta.
Then sign it.
🎨 Prismacolor pencil on grey Canson Mi-Teintes paper, with watercolor underpainting. 20 x 26 inches.
🐕 “Shasta”, a portrait of an Australian Shepherd hiking in the Vancouver Island forest with her beloved people.
Commissioned by Diane Barnes as a gift for her son Takeshi and his fiancé Cheryl.
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