… or third. The gray stage is a good time to make adjustments to the drawing.
When you know your subject really well, it’s really easy to get fixated on imperfections. The positions of the eyes and nose were really bothering me, and if you flip through the various gray stage images, you’ll see how I keep making small adjustments until it looked right enough. I particularly like how the eyes suggest the tilt of her head.
The gray stage just used a combination of raw umber and white. In the color stage, Sorcha’s fur is made up with a transparent red oxide, ultramarine blue, and alizaron. The fur by her nose is highlighted a bit more with specks of blue and black.
The FAO Schwarz Patrick pup that Sorcha is holding was terribly tedious. First, I layered in the dark brown, mostly a combination of raw umber and transparent red oxide. Then I brushed in each fur clump in a creamier brown, each time stepping back to make sure the overall gradient matched the shape of pup. In the end, though, I think the contract between Sorcha’s super soft looking fur and Patrick’s shorter clumpy fur works really well.
Lucky for me, Sorcha’s sister, Bianca, just worked out easily.
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I’ve hesitated to paint Sorcha, because how could I do her justice? She’s just too cute. But, I saw this picture and couldn’t resist. Gotta start looking for a Bianca pic now too, so they can be together.
At the Kline Academy, we all start our paintings with a rubout. We cover the canvas with a layer of oil and raw umber. Then we start to rubout the image with a cloth, rubbing more on the whiter parts of the image. The process is typically frustrating for me, because it looks like a mess closeup. But it really does make the whole painting process easier in the end. It forces me to figure out the relative lightness and darkness of the overall composition.
The next stage is the grey stage. We mix raw umber with white, and start painting a grayscale version of the painting. Here, we can get into all the little details. It always starts out rough, but its getting there slowly. The nose and eyes are still a little funny. I’m surprised out how well the fur is turning out in some parts…Even i”m convinced that ear is covered in fur and laying on fur… very weird!
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It’s hard to evaluate my work when I’m in the mist of it. After hours of trying to get a shadow right on a piece of clothing, it ends up looking like a piece of abstract art. But some time and distance brings clarity. Hopefully, putting together this site will provide greater perspective.
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