Button - West Highland Terrier

This is the middle section of the painting: shadows are added in increasing depth. In the middle one you can see how hues of yellow, orange, brown, purple, blues and even greens have been added to the fur to give it depth. The background has been given more depth and texture, then greys, reds and browns have been painted into the shadow side of the face. The final part of the painting is more subtle as fine details are painted in and more attention paid to the hue shifts within the shadows. Keep watching!!

Button - West Highland Terrier

This new commission of Button, a west highland terrier, is for a highly detailed painting in acrylics on a large canvas board size 841 x 594 mm. The photo I'm working from was taken on a phone so there's not a huge amount of crisp information for me to work with but the client has sent me some other slightly bigger photos. I started by sketching Button's face onto the canvas board and created a rough tonal under-painting to mark areas of shadow. Then I added texture paste to the fur to create highlights and textural interest. A strong background colour has been painted in to enhance the highlights and now I'm starting the process of building up the subtle tones and colours in the fur. It's lovely working on a really large panel and a portrait at this size I'm hoping will be stunning.

Corporate Portrait

After working on Oz's skin tone and adding more depth to the shadows on her face I spent some time blending in the colours and sharpening up the details. I mixed my own dark browns and blacks before finally adding carbon black into the darkest areas of her hair and eyes. I think I'm finally happy with her portrait - I just hope she is!!