Studio Update: 'Luke with Little Miracles Puppy'

It's been quite a productive week, though I had hoped to have this painting finished by week's end, it still has some way to go. I'm getting faster at painting, but it seem to always take longer than I expect to finish a painting. Below is where I am at with the painting of 'Luke with Little Miracles Puppy'

I'm painting Luke with his Little Miracles Puppy to raise awareness and money for Mater Little Miracles. This painting will be auctioned on Facebook on completion with all proceeds going to the Mater Foundation. To read Luke's touching story and learn more about Mater Little Miracles visit the Mater Foundation website here: http://www.materfoundation.org.au/Events-and-Campaigns/Mater-Little-Miracles/Luke-s-story.aspx

Above is the sketching of the painting in light grey paint, that I showed last week for PPF. Here I'm noting the proportions and shapes in relation to each other. I have placed marks on the outer edges as guides to the middle, quarters (width) and sixths (height).  This is similar to a grid system, however I use my eyes to draw the line.

Next I blocked in the light dark and mid tones of the face, observing shapes of colours and their relationship to each other.  I'm not necessarily drawing his eyes or nose, yes I'm conscious of these facial features, but I'm looking at the larger massed of shapes and blocking in these forms with a colour similar in value, temperature and intensity.

 

Then, I painted the hair, again I blocked in light, dark and mid tones. I use a combination of Howard Sanden's Pro Mix Portrait colours (I mixed myself) and Walter Foster's Color Mixing Recipe for blond hair for the colour.  Again I'm noting the shapes of colour and their value, temperature and intensity and trying to match what I see. At this stage I'm not adding detail or painting every strand of hair.  I also blocked in a tone in the background, looking at the negative space surrounding Luke and defining the shape of the nose, eyes and ears (the ears were repositioned as I had them too low on the face).

Next, you guessed it, I added light, dark and mid tones. this time on the brown of puppy's ears and nose. I also added the shadow on his cheek and defined puppy's visible eye.

Then, I observed and painted the puppy's white fur and started to form the shirt and hands. I livened up the background with a lighter, though more intense blue, noting the negative space. You may notice that the edges are all blurry, at this stage I faded out the edges (with a soft makeup brush) because the painting session is about at the end and the forms were not yet establish correctly and needed to be re-worked at a later date.

 

Next, I just could not resist adding detail and hue to his eyes! The blues/greys of his eyes are based off  both the blue and grey colour mixes from the Walter Foster's book on 'Color Mixing Recipes for portraits'.  Believe it or not the eyes contain many colours including black, ultra blue, white, cad. red, cer. blue, naples yellow, viridian green, burnt umber, burnt sienna and cad. orange. 

  

Thanks for stopping by my blog for PPF, and a big thank you for all your comments last week.  I managed to get around to most blogs last week, though I did not get the time to comment on all posts. You are all doing amazing things, and I look forward to visiting your blogs again this week.

Happy Creating! Tracey. 

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