Recently I finished this dog portrait commission. It was a wonderful learning experience, and I want to share how I prepared for it. If you are also working on a more complex painting, I hope this may be helpful. The key is: study, study, study! :)
I always start with a pencil sketch to study the features. In this case, the features of dogs aren't too complex, but what is really complex is the visual relationship between the two dogs. How I can make them both show up vividly without competing against each other. I used the pencil study to study this, especially through contrasts and lost-and-found edges.
The next study I did was swatch study and color study. I tried out different color combinations both for the subjects and the background (the fourth photo). I got some ideas but did not limit myself to the study. As you can see, for the finished painting I went for an entirely different color for the background.
From there I went directly to the big painting. Looking back I wish I did one more study - just paint one dog on a small piece of paper. I hadn't painted dogs for almost a year, and when I started on the first dog in the front, I got into some trouble. Thankfully, it still worked out in the end, whew~~
First dog in progress
Second dog in progress
When I painted the big painting, I liked to remind myself that this was also a study, and set the intention to have a enlightening learning experience. This helped me avoid a singular result-driven process, which I found to be limiting the creativity. Still, having a learning mind-set is not easy especially when a lot is on the stake I am still working on it!
Hope the above tips help! I also included here the reference photo I used. You will see that as artists we don't always have a perfect photo to work with, but as artists our job is not to copy a photo, but to use our creativity to bring out the beautiful light in seemingly imperfect situations, isn't it?
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