I have been trying to do a few more animal portraits as samples for my esty shop. I found a nice picture Of Ding Dong Dog and decided to use it. The photo was taken when she was still a puppy – not that she ever really grew up. She was over six before she had much sense in any given situation.
It is okay, except I don’t like the head over much. I have been thinking about what especially bothers me and I have decided that part of the problem is that the overall size is too small to detail the features the way I want. I think that for full body portraits I will have to go up in size. Between the ink work and the watercolor shading there is just not enough space to do it all so it ends up dark and a little muddy looking. What I may try next is just a head/shoulder shot of her and see if that helps. In the one featuring Perkins the crabby cat a few posts ago, the face was almost half of the painting and it allowed for a lot more subtlety.
But that will have to wait. Insert happy dance here. Last Thursday I received two (!!!) orders for custom architectural portraits. I have spent the last couple of days laying out the pencil drawings and am pretty happy with both of them so far. One is an 8×10 pen and ink of a cottage and the other is a 10×14 of an old barn. That one will be watercolor. I usually use the pastels for the portraits, but this buyer specified watercolors like I did for a couple of barns in my etsy store. I guess variety is the spice of life. I look forward to spending the next weeks finishing them. Stay tuned.