A Big, Shaggy Dog

Brogan is an Irish Wolfhound and he's huge! Irish Wolfhounds are the tallest breed of dog. He may be big, but he's an easy-going sweetheart and handsome too. I've posted in-progress scans of this portrait previously, and now it's finished. Both dogs are Brogan - the upper right is him when he was younger with a lighter coat and the lower left is him after he'd matured and his coat became more grey.

"Brogan" - 7" x 9" on 9" x 12" Aquabord. Ink, Watercolor & Color Pencil

This painting is on Ampersand's Aquabord, a textured, clay-coated board. I like to use it for full-color realistic portraits like this one. The surface takes watercolor well and I can also scratch into it. It's much harder to scratch than the Claybord I use for other drawings, so that can be a bit challenging, but it works. It's also a pain to scan, because the texture (many bumps) is picked up by my scanner, so I have to do a lot of cleanup on the background of the scan.

Here are a couple of details of the portrait:




And an animation:


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Materials used:
Ampersand Aquabord
India Ink
Technical Pen
Daniel Smith Watercolors
Prismacolor Colored Pencils
X-Acto Knife with #16 Blade

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Work in Progress

Nothing really new to report, but I've been plugging away on a number of drawings, so I thought I'd post three of them that are in progress. The first two are farther along than last time I posted them on the blog.

This one is a pencil portrait of Breezy, the Arab mare:


Here's an earlier stage of the drawing:


The drawing is approximately 7" x 7" in pencil on Stonehenge paper.

This portrait of Brogan, an Irish Wolfhound, is mixed media (ink, watercolor & eventually, color pencil) on Aquabord. The board is 9" x 12", which makes the image area approx. 8" x 10".


This stage is watercolor, applied fairly loosely to block in the basic areas of color. The darkest areas (black) were drawn with India ink.


Here I've added some more detail with watercolor



Here I've scratched in detail and fur texture with an X-Acto knife (#11 blade). The next step will be to come back in with watercolor applied more carefully than in the first two steps.


The last one is a drawing of a German Shepherd pup on black scratchboard (Ampersand Scratchbord). This is not a commission, just one I'm doing because I want to work on the black scratchboard surface. I haven't done many illustrations on this surface. I've been hanging out in the Scratchboard Forum of WetCanvas lately, and there's some jaw-dropping work on the black boards in that group.


This is a 5" x 7" board. All I've done so far is scratch with an X-Acto knife. Once I have all the scratching completed, I'll come back in with ink as needed for detail.

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Portraits Underway . . .

Just thought I'd share the early stages of a few dog portraits that I've started.

The first three are 4" x 4" on the Art Board surface (watercolor paper mounted to an archival board). The last one is a larger piece on a 9" x 12" Aquabord.


This is Buddha, a Samoyed - a white and very furry breed. So far, I've used black ink on his nose & eyes, some white and pale blue color pencil around the edges of his fur and watercolor for the background and other colored areas. I put the color pencil on first, to resist the paint at the edges of the dog. Some paint bled in past the pencil on the left side, so I scrubbed/lifted a bit of it off. That side will be in more shadow, so it's not a problem. Since Buddha's fur is all white, I'll tweak the color palette on this painting to be similar to this portrait I did of Bailey. Buddha's portrait will have more "floof" and less curl texture than Bailey's.


Cali, a terrier mix, has more dark colors on her than Buddha, so you see more ink work here. I've used a black Micron pen for the ink. Next, I'll paint the background blue and then Cali. She's brown, tan and white, so I'll paint her in shades of purple and orange with pale purple for the shadows on her white areas.


On Gus, a lab mix, I've done a lot more work with the black ink, since he's a black dog. He's wearing a bandanna which will be teal, with Gus in shades of purple/blue. I haven't decided yet, but I think the background will be a purple-tinged blue.


And lastly, this is Brogan, an Irish Wolfhound. I took reference photos of him when he was younger and then over a year later when he'd matured. My client wants both stages of his life depicted in his portrait. Young Brogan is in the upper right corner. For this portrait, since it will be more detailed and realistic, I'm using the Aquabord, which has a coated surface that allows for scratching, along with my application of ink, watercolor & color pencil. So far, I've used ink for the darkest areas and watercolor for everything else. I use a technical pen filled with India ink for the Aquabord portraits. The next step will be to scratch in detail and texture. I made this video of a German Shepherd portrait done with the same technique.

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