Preliminary painting for "Chicklet"
I wanted to paint a pet portrait for a special gift. When you really want a piece to come out, it can turn out so differently. This was not the case with this most recent pet portrait. I prepared the masonite as usual, using a paint roller from the hardware store, leaving plenty of “tooth” or texture to accept the paint. I thought about tracing the image, but I told myself not to be a weeney, grab the blue pencil and be the Artist.
The dog’s proportions were easy, but capturing his personality was, I thought, going to be tough. Not so. I was on a roll. I’m what is known as a colorist. You paint anything that is in shadow a value of purple. Anything that is in sunlight is painted in a value of yellow. It makes the colors really pop when you start to put the local color over the underpainting.
After 8 hours, the masonite was really wet and I had to stop or I’d ruin it. It’s been drying upstairs for a day and I’ll work on it again tomorrow. Since it’s gone so easily up until now, I’ll have to go very slowly until it’s done. It is easy to still see large areas of the underpainting. These will slowly be replaced by the buffy fur color.