May

10

Katie Part 5

Filed Under Carrie Lewis 

I did a little bit of work on Katie’s portrait yesterday. Not much, unfortunately, but the one thing I’ve learned about painting — and about myself — is that more paintings are finished sooner if I paint in every little chunk of time that comes my way instead of waiting for that “perfect painting hour”! It is just too easy to let days go by without doing studio work if I can’t or won’t make use of 20 minutes here and 20 minutes there.

I believe I had about 20 minutes last night, so I worked on Katie. Those 20 minutes stretched into about 45 and quite a bit of work done in a small area. Work that wouldn’t have otherwise been done.

I started with Katie’s nose and painted the skin part of that with Ivory Black and Titanium White.

That led naturally to painting the muzzle area around the nose, which was mostly dry brush work alternating strokes of white with strokes of black.

The reference photo is looking down on Katie, a composition that doesn’t usually lend itself to good portrait compositions. But I remember seeing Katie once or twice in person (I wish I had paid more attention!), so I am going to try to paint a more head on portrait.

To do that, I need to add some neck and chest in the painting, so I worked on that, using lots of white and a little black to block in Katie’s throat and chest. Just for fun, I added the chain collar so the area would read a bit more easily. That’s going to be the real challenge because geometric shapes and I don’t get along that well. I see lots of painting and repainting to get those loops and rings correct!

©Copyright 2008 by Carrie Lewis. See original post here.

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