This week I have begun to paint new portraits of my own dogs as they sit and watch me paint in the studio. I use a very bright daylight white light to paint by, and I have managed to take a couple of fairly decent reference photos of the girls with good contrast to paint from. The canvases are 50 x 50cm square and Im using a limited palette of titanium white, transparent maroon , quinacridone gold , cobalt blue and ultramarine blue. on both portraits.
I sat them looking slightly away from me and then got them to look back at the camera just with their eyes, so that the nose is angled away. I like to do this for long nosed dogs so that the expression isnt dominated by a big button nose which can happen when long nosed dogs are looking into the camera head-on.
These photos show the results of the first session on these paintings, once dry I will make a few tweaks , resolve a few mistakes that I can see. It was really enjoyable painting my girls.