Sofia Finished

I have gone ahead and made some final adjustments and cleaned up the border. Below is an image showing the slight changes I made to the eye brows in order to appear more pronounced. I didn’t want to over do it.

Top: After Bottom: Before

 

Now here is the final Painting of Sofia.

Sofia finished and unframed

 

Work in Progress 1 Boris and Gus

This painting will be a 9×12 watercolor of the late chocolate lab, Boris, and of Gus, who is the new addition to the family. As requested I will be doing a background of the ocean since Boris was taken there to play often and because young little Gus will taken there soon be as well. Also, I am putting a tennis ball in the foreground right between both dogs as requested.

Boris

Sofia Update

All that is left to do now is clean up the boarder and fix a few minor spots, then put my signature at the bottom.

I am still here.

I would like to take this time to announce my return. Many have been wondering where I went the last few months as my blog has been strangely silent with no new posts. A few of you may already know that August of this year my husband and I left California with all our things loaded into the back of our car and drove across the country to the state of New Hampshire where we now reside. That was about three months ago. Originally my plan was to continue working on my commissions and even take on a few more once I got here. But fate would not have this. It was my intention for both of us to find part time work right away so we would have enough money for food and rent and the like. Unfortunately, I under estimated how hard that task would be and how long it would take us. One month into arriving here I realized that I would have to set aside my art for the time being and put all my energies into finding a steady paycheck or face the unthinkable.

Eventually, I would like to be able to make a living doing this, and I am prepared to work hard towards that goal in spite of all the inevitable setbacks that will undoubtedly line the road before me. This is what I love.

Now, we are doing better and things are feeling less like walking up hill on loose gravel and more like steady ground. I have returned to where I left off with my art and will be posting the next progress photo very soon.

Sofia

Continuing to add detail to the grass and develop the background

Sofia

Adding color to the grass

Sofia wip

Sofia wip 6

Today I worked on deepening the shadows along the body. I took a clean clean paint jar and filled it with 50% cobalt blue, 10% black and 40% water to dilute it down to watercolor consistency. This gave me a nice wash of dark navy blue. I went over the purple, black and blue areas with this.

 

deepening the shadows

Sofia wip 5

Progress has been slow over the last couple of days. I have been working on the neck and the right forearm. Part of the reason it is taking as long as it has is for trying to determine the right colors to use in the fur and how to texture it right. For Sofia’s portrait I needed to combine two images of her. One is a head shot and the other is of her lying in the grass. They were merged in photoshop but I am having to overcome an issue with different lighting in the two images. They were both taken in the shade and so there is a bluish purple tint to everything. I decided to keep this for effect but I have to figure out how to blend the two images with different light angles so that it looks realistic. A lot of time has been spent standing in front of the canvas and staring at it. Once I get past the front paws and shoulders the rest of the painting will proceed much faster.

Work on the neck and right paw.

 

Sofia wip 4

Adding under tones and shadow to Sofia's body