Take three Collies

I'm working on a number of commissions at the moment, hence the gap in blog updates, but some of them are at a similar stage now so they will arrive in a flurry, or like buses: all at once! These three lovely collies all live in the same family: Megan, in the photos above, is the eldest and as the matriarch takes pride of place in the centre of the portrait; Meg has her ears pricked  up and Tess looks more laid back with her ears down. I started by painting the canvas board with a mixture of yellow ochre, burnt sienna and raw umber just to 'kill the white' as Rolf Harris puts it. Then I sketched an outline of the dogs over the top and started applying white texture paste to the white areas of the dogs. I was in the mood to do more of the detail so carried on mixing my texture paint with some mars black and carried on painting Tess. I painted their eyes and mouths in roughly to establish their place on the canvas and let the layers dry. In the next two stages I worked on all three dogs at once, adding more layers of paint and texture and letting it dry ready to build more colours into their coats. Keep watching...!