I am finding these a fun way to wind down in the evening. I thought I would give you a quick snippet into the process.
If you have ever used watercolours you will know what I mean when I refer to wet in wet. If not it’s when you lay down water first or a wash of water colour and then add more watercolour on top. This causes the paint to run and bleed in all sorts of random and fun ways. Watercolours can have a mind of their own when used this way. After painting pet portraits in pastel with a lot of control and fine detail I found this quite hard to get my head round to begin with.
I also use a paint brush to flick random specks of paint. Sometimes into the wet and sometimes the dry paint. When that has dried or nearly dried I may or may not add some layers of more paint in various places, depending on the effect I want to achieve. It doesn’t always work out how I want it to, but often there are happy accidents.
I then leave it dry again. Here you can see the result. I think you you can tell its going to be a dog portrait. I hope. Any idea of the breed?
I then leave the paint to dry again and it’s time for the pen. What I am Di g larger paintings I use a thicker pen. All are waterproof so I can paint over them should I decide after without them running and ruining the portrait.
I developed this technique of pet portraits from a combination of my crazy rainbow watercolours and my pen and ink watercolour paintings. When I get on to my laptop tomorrow I will show yu them side by side so you can see hopefully how the idea came about. I am still happy to offer pet portraits in either style.
Here is the finished piece. I did add a bit of white acrylic to pick out certain details. I don’t always do this but I felt this painting needed it. I shall email. The client tomorrow.
I will definitely get a scan tomorrow as the night is reflecting off the pen a bit nd the colours just aren’t as vibrant as they are in the original piece.
I am pretty happy with it anyway as these are a new venture for me!
It’s taken ages for me to update this with a scan of the final watercolour dog portrait, but here it is, meet Dora, isn’t she a sweetheart. Sadly she crossed the rainbow bridge a few weeks ago, so I was delighted to be able to paint her portrait to give her owner something special by which to remember her.
