Pups with Underpaintings

1/3/24 Butters (reference photo by Lori Beck)

In addition to giving me enjoyable subject matter, the pet portrait commissions I’ve been making are giving me opportunities to try mixed media experiments. With Butters, nearly all black except for the graying muzzle, I first applied a wet-in-wet underpainting with a black ArtGraf Tailor Shape block (underpainting stage shown below). After that dried, I followed up with Faber-Castell Polychromos and Prismacolors to do the refined drawing. Although the hefty tooth on Strathmore 140-pound cold press paper is not my favorite with colored pencils, the underpainting speeded up the pencil work considerably.

ArtGraf Tailor Shape block underpainting

Drawing Butters was especially bittersweet. When I took the commission, I was told that he had cancer and was not expected to live much longer. By the time I finished a couple of days later, he had just been put down. I felt that his last loving act was to give me joy in drawing him.

1/4/24 Maggie G (reference photo by Misty Thompson)

The reference photo for Maggie G, the golden pup, offered beautiful lighting. I exaggerated the warm light a bit with a watercolor underpainting in an ochre hue. As I did with Butters, I applied colored pencil over the dried underpainting. At first I was frustrated that the paper’s tooth was too strong for the soft Prismacolors I chose. It wasn’t as much of a problem with black Butters because the underpainting was also black, but with Maggie, I wanted better coverage. I switched to much harder Polychromos halfway through. Eventually, I came to like the sparkle of the underpainting showing through, but going forward, I think I’ll stick with Polychromos when I don’t want as much of the underpainting to show. I’m very pleased, though, with the bit of backlighting around her ears – that’s where the underpainting shines.

Watercolor underpainting

Although it’s somewhat risky to try new techniques or experiments on commissions, these animal portraits are so small that the worst that can happen is that I mess up, and I have to start over – not a huge price to pay for a good lesson. They are turning out to be the ideal learning lab (as opposed to a learning poodle – heh, heh)!