WOODY & WILSON the Welsh Springer Spaniels
12” x 12” oil on board
All the white I was painting this I was thinking of these 2 being like kids playing musical chairs at a party…you know how one person has the chair and the other manages to wedge their bum on the side and try to claim that they were there first! Then they look at the adult in charge who has the impossible task of keeping everyone happy whilst declaring a winner!
It’s not often I start with a nose!…but here the focal point was the meeting of mouths around the ball rather than it being all about the eyes. I was mindful of keeping my ‘whitest whites’ in the focal area and making any other light areas ‘off-white’. In a similar way I chose to make small marks in the focal area and larger ones around the edge, and also to have sharp edges in the focal area and softer ones around the edge. I’ve now done about 50 animal portraits and by repeating the process so often I’ve gained a lot of insight into ‘what works’ (and what doesn’t!). Talking of which - have you ‘spotted the difference’?? I wasn’t 100% happy with the green in the background in the process pics…so changed it to blue :)