Sasha in oils

This is Sasha, Jack Russell Terrier.  For my Pet Portrait Diploma with the London Art College, I've decided to chose the option of 'clothed pet' as one of my pieces for assessment.  These are the pictures I'm going to use.  I'm supposed to use one good-quality photo, but the clothed picture was taken with a 3 mega-pixel camera-phone, so not too good, but the image is lovely otherwise.

I chose an 8" x 8" canvas board and I scaled up the image from the photo.  The paints are Artisan water-mixable oils and this is the first time I've used them.  The background is a mixture of yellow, blue and white plus yellow ochre.  To give the effect of grass, I will probably go over this a few times.

 On go the reds and oranges . . .

Buddy: from study to canvas

I decided to give my new Cryla acrylics a try-out and thought I'd transfer my practice piece of Buddy onto a canvas.  This was the first stage - a sketch in 2B pencil on a canvas 40 x 50 cm.
I thought blue for the background as I could then use some greyish blues in his coat to bring the two together.  Next, I blocked-in some of the main colours, including some red on his ears, no doubt inherited from his Irish setter mum!

He's taking shape now; I've used a range of greys, browns and whites to give him the different contrasts he has in his, what looks like, predominantly black coat. It's amazing just how many colours a black dog can have in their coat.
Here he is finished for now.  I've left him on the easel, so might add a few hairs here and there.  This was taken in quite gloomy daylight so the colours don't look as rich as the ones above.  Overall, though, a good likeness of Buddy the 'Border Setter', as we like to call him.

Rosie & Gracie

I first sketched an outline of the dogs, then, using grey velour paper, I put the sketch over the top and with the lid of a pen, lightly pressed through to give an indent.  I wasn't sure whether I'd be able to rub out pencil marks, so this seemed the way to go.

I lightly applied the base colours with Rembrandt conte pastels.

Rosie's complete and now to continue with Gracie.  For the detail I used Faber-Castell pitt pastel pencils.  I worked mainly from left to right in order to avoid smudging, but I also covered up sections with clean paper to rest my hand on.

Here they are - both finished - ready in time for Mothers' Day!

Now off to the framers for mount, backboard and cellophane.