Chloe & Henry

Way back in May, a friend of mine posted a picture of one of her daughters in her Senior Prom dress...with the dog. Apparently, Henry (a rambunctious sheepadoodle) had just returned from two weeks at 'boot camp' and they were getting re-acquainted.

I love Chloe and I love painting dogs, and I really love painting relationships - the photo was begging to be painted! I quickly asked permission to do so.

However, there were several other things I needed to finish first - it's a little like having to eat the spinach before desert - so I didn't get to this until July.

I knew it was going to be a pastel and thought it would look good on toned paper. I did the pencil sketch and began painting with my soft pastels. Since the paper tended toward a darker value, I began with the light areas.

 I continued to paint and began to realize that the tooth (texture) of the paper was distracting. I tried to make it work, but kept being disappointed. A good learning experience, but I needed to start again. So much for the toned paper.

 I switched to my favorite - sandpaper. I have been using a 500 grit UART paper  - it's archival and has worked well for me in the past. I got this far and wondered what I was going to do with the background. The sanded paper is just beige, it needs a little color.

 Knowing that it I did not want to mess it up at this point and have to paint it again, I got out a piece of acetate paper. It's a clear (like plastic) sheet that I can experiment on. I laid the acetate over the painting and tried different background colors using my watercolor paints. I tried several - here are just two...  The original photo had an outside background.- grass, stone path and sky.

Although the photo had more color, adding a color (like the green) that I had not previously used seemed very artificial. 

Hmmm, I liked the blue dress - orange is the complement...

 That seems to being out Chloe's facial features.

Now to work on the dress. The prom dress was beautiful - navy blue with white flowers. However, as I tried to capture the flowers, I found them distracting. After all, the painting is about the relationship - them looking at each other - not about the dress!  In the end, I made the dress a solid blue.

Then I added the background that I had chosen...trying to add different values to it so it isn't solid and heavy.

This is one of the paintings I will be exhibiting in November at the library in St Michaels. We are having a themed show - "Animals"  More about that at another time.