Speaking As Someone Who Uses Cats As Models

I find dogs hard to draw.  Since I don't draw them often, that should not be a surprise.  I enjoy working with the crayons, because I can layer and layer and layer.  In the end, there's more I like about this than I don't, so I will probably send it.  

My cousin had to put down his 8 year-old, beloved golden retriever, Sadie.  It was very sudden.  In two days, she went from being a seemingly, healthy dog, to having several neurological episodes, which led to discovering that she had an advanced condition which could not be treated.  

This is my best attempt at trying to capture Sadie.  In the past, I've tried to paint her. 

I spent a lot of time working on this one and decided yesterday that I just needed to be done.  

Now, I can get back to doing cats in hats. 

Sled Dog Howl

Way back in 2005, I went on a winter camping trip up north with friends where we also did dog-sledding. These dogs sure weren't house pets. They were working dogs and they were amazing. They also howled a lot. One would start and the rest would chime in. I wish I would have taken more pictures, since it was a really fun experience. I have two howling pictures. One was perfect to use for a painting.

Here is the start. For a  picture with such sharp contrast, I find it helpful to start with the lightest lights. When I get better at this value stuff I might change that in the future, but for now this is working well for me.

Here it is a little farther along.

Here is the final version.

#177 - Sled Dog Howl - 5" x 7" - paper - standard palette

Sadie

This gets you to my first attempt.  This gets you to attempt #2 through #7.  It's still not quite there, but attempt #8 is getting much closer.

#171 - Sadie - 8" x 10" - paper - std palette

I Missed One

This was my first try in June 2016.

Finally!

Here is Sadie.

I first tried to paint her in August 2016.  At this point, I had been painting for about 6 months. 

Since that time, I tried again, 

and again, 

and again, 

I cropped the picture differently and tried again.

I tried one more time last night. Painting the same picture helps me see how I'm doing. All of the drawing that I've been doing has helped me. There is still so much room for improvement, but I feel like my skills have taken a step forward. The things I like best are the eyes, the muzzle, and the color.  For some reason, I've tended to make my oranges and browns muddy and that's how this painting started, but I went back and changed it. My darkest values may be a little extreme, but that works better than now having enough range in the values. 

When You Paint A Lot Of Cats, Dogs Are Harder To Paint

So far, last week's painting of Hammett is my all-time favorite. One of the nice things about being a beginner is that I get a new all-time favorite every month or so, The downside is that afterwards my next several painting attempts don't go very well. I've worked on two paintings, since the one of Hammett, and they are already out of my life. One was a bird. The other was a painting of the same dog, but it was from a different picture - - - a much harder picture to use for a painting. I decided to give myself a break and try again, but with a better/easier picture.

While I'm not thrilled, I'm not disappointed either. When I try something new, it generally takes 3 attempts to start to "get it".

While this has some problems, I'll take it as a first attempt. Also, this one looks much better when you look at it from way across the room.

Ralphie - Making Progress

I don't paint dogs as often as cats, so I find them harder to paint. While I like this picture, it's dark and that makes it challenging for me to paint.

While the dog's face is still scrunched up and the eyes are too big, the face is less scrunched up than usual!  I've had some real stinkers that I haven't posted.

Second Attempt

My second try turned out better. While I'm not fond of my paint strokes or some of the choices that I made, I am much happier with the shape of the dog's face. I will revisit this one some time in the future.

For comparison, here is the first attempt from several days ago.

A Better Drawing

A better drawing of the dog that I painted earlier this week will, hopefully, lead to a better painting today or tomorrow.

Slight Change In Attitude

When I walked away from this one to clean my brushes, my first thoughts were pretty negative. When I walked back after cleaning my brushes, it looked a little better.  

 

I'm a bit out of practice and I have trouble painting dogs. This dog is black and white with black/white/gray splotches.  I haven't figured out how to represent black when you need something besides just the gesso. Lots of excuses.

Still, it was funny that my attitude went from totally negative to more balanced after a short break away.  

Sadie Take 5

It was a very difficult day. Tonight, I decided to finish the painting of Sadie, in spite of that.

Hello!

There was a big 3-day knitting event in town this weekend and I had a very busy weekend attending classes and lectures. It was wonderful! Each night, I came home and my brain was completely full. I was too tired to think about drawing or painting. Yesterday, I did do a simple drawing. Today, I finally picked up the paint brushes, again, and it felt good.

First up is the color gray. I missed painting class on Saturday. Apparently, we are supposed to practice our grays. The goal is a neutral gray, but I decided to play around with different types of grays. Since I made up grids long, long ago to test my paint mixing, I pulled those out. I used the same color paint (in relative order) on the two different grids. One is on white gesso and other is on black gesso. It's interesting to see how different they look. Not surprisingly, the grays look grayer on the black gesso than on the white.

Also, I started a painting of Sadie (again). Here is the drawing.

Here is the start of the painting. I worked around the entire painting, rather than focusing in one place. I also tried to have "juicier" paint strokes. It's still hard to get good coverage with orange and yellow/orange colors. Finally, I am really, really trying to do a better job on the values. It sounds like work, but it wasn't. I was in a nice little zone, which was a welcome break from waiting for election results. When the zone left me, it was time to stop for the night.

Ralphie

I had a late afternoon work-related meeting in a coffee shop.  My client work before the meeting ended early, so there was time to do a drawing using values.

I need to keep doing this!  It's fun. It's quick and it's a good way to learn.  I can see some areas where the values could be tweaked, but I'm going to move on.  The light I was working in wasn't the greatest.

Sadie - Take Four

Today's painting of Sadie:

The last time time that I painted Sadie:

I like today's painting better, especially the fact the the values are lighter in today's version.  The only thing I like better about my prior version is the eyes.  She looks a bit bug-eyed in today's version, plus I could not get a good reddish brown color mixed today.

Sadie - Take 3

I'm stuck in my brain about how to mix Wingnut's lighter colors, so I diverted to painting Sadie for the third time today.  In many cases, three is the magic number.  For this one, my guess is that four might be the magic number.  Still, I feel good about the improvement each time.

I did the sketch at work at lunch today.  It was on a 5 inch square surface.  It made the drawing harder, since I'm using a version of the above picture that is 8 inches square.

Here is the finished painting (a/k/a my third attempt).  The nose is getting better!  I'm also pleased with the lighter background.  I don't know why, but for a long time it was really, really hard to paint lighter backgrounds. Sadie is still a little too dark. Also, her eye color is hard. They should stand out more. There are so many orange and brown colors, I'm not sure how to do it.

This was my second attempt, painted in mid-August:

This was my first attempt, painted in mid-June:

Sadie - Take 2

I finished it this morning.  This photograph is in "truer" light than yesterday's.

There are a lot of things that I like about it, including the values, shapes and energy.  It was fun being more sploshy with the background.   Next time, I need to make all of the colors lighter in relative value.

Sadie - Take 2 (Work In Progress)

Today is crazy.  While I had a day to work at home and had more than a full day of work, a few other things crept up that had to be done, including going to the veterinarian's office twice today.  I probably should have sacrificed painting time today, but I really, really did not want to.

Here's Sadie as a work in progress.  I plan to finish this tomorrow.

Here's my first painting of Sadie back in mid-June. I like the way the face shape is turning out on this newer attempt. One of the things I like about this blog is being able to do these types of comparisons.

Sadie - Take 1

The plan is to revisit this, as I do for so many other paintings.  For some reason, the third time works best.  Maybe a forth or fifth time would be even better, but after three tries I'm ready for a new thing to paint.

Here's the first attempt. It's the third time that I've ever tried to paint a dog and, overall, I'm pleased with this.  As I've written before, it's thrilling to capture what I see in either a drawing or painting, even if the end result is not quite what I want. When I keep working at it, it makes me happy to look back and see progress.

Things I like:

• The eyes.  It's surprised me that they are less complicated than cat's eyes. 
• The background.  This is another surprise, since I generally do not like my backgrounds. 
• The nose.  It's better than the value drawing that I did awhile ago.  

On the negative side, there is something really off with the mouth and muzzle.  The face is too dark and the body is too light.  The relative values are off from the picture.  One cause was that it was hard to mix the colors.  It also took me until the end to loosen up.  

I have a painting class with Kat on Wednesday.  I can't wait and hope to learns lots!!!!  

Draw First, Paint Later (Sadie)

Want to paint.  Need to be disciplined.  Want to paint.  Need to be disciplined. Today being disciplined won out.  Here is the picture.

Here is the rough drawing with values.

Actually, I should call it a modified rough drawing.  I really try to get the outline without being too anal retentive.  The nose could use some work, but I gave myself a break.  I've been painting cats, not dogs.  The tongue ended up pink, since I feared losing it in the rest of the shapes down there.  

I tried painting from this dog picture 6 weeks ago or so and it just did not work.  I couldn't see the way that I'm seeing today.  It's like taking a tiny step up a long staircase.  Hopefully, I'll feel as though I've taken another step in 6 weeks from now or whatever time it takes. 

Art 4 Shelter

Tonight is Art 4 Shelter, a fundraiser for Simpson Housing Services.  I painted several paintings for this event.  Submissions are on a 5 x 7 piece of paper.  Everything is sold for $30.  Until you purchase an item, you don't know who produced it.

My perfectionist tendencies when into overdrive for the first item that I painted.  It was a parrot from a picture that I took in Barcelona in 2014.  I painted it something like 4-5 times until I submitted a version of it.

After that I tried to just chill.  Someone will buy these or not.  It's only $30 per painting.  It's all good. 

I traced the water lilies.  

This is my first dog painting.  It does not look as much like the picture as I'd like, but I'm still pleased with this one. 

Last, I painted a couple of over-the-top cats.  After these, I got the cat-thing figured out a little better. Still I especially like the one with the blue background.  It has a sort of a day-of-the-dead feeling to it, or something.