Times are getting tough here in the UK. Rather than wait and see what next year will be like financially, I decided to be proactive and see if I could start a side hustle if things got dire.
I was intrigued by this post on Facebook. I thought "You know what, I reckon I can draw dogs" so decided to give it a try.
If I got a few hours in and it looked god awful, no harm done. If it was half decent I could spend a couple of hours a week for some extra money in a pinch.
Obviously nobody would commission me without examples so I got to work on my first attempt. My subject was going to be my own dog Max and I picked a fairly difficult photo of him.
For a plain black dog there was going to be a lot of colour work due to the light reflecting off his chest, and my phone camera contrasting the orange with a tinge of blue in the shadows.
Let's begin!
First step was getting the proportions correct. To do this I literally taped the paper to my TV and screencast a photo of Max, then very gently traced his outline and some of the changes in light.
As I'm right handed I started at the top left to avoid smudging the wet paint with my wrist.
Around this point I had a warm fuzzy feeling and knew the finished piece was going to look good. I was already not looking forward to starting the nose and mouth due to how complex they are and important they are to get right.
I did make a mental note that next time I need to be much more careful with the paper. You can see where it overhung the table and I creased it several times.
I had spent a lot of time at this point and was starting to get impatient. The tongue and teeth were definitely more rushed than I should have allowed myself. In the future I'll make sure to allow myself more time for difficult areas like these as they're what makes a picture realistic. Max is also 25% mouth! So it needs to look spot on.
At this point it was time for some improvisation. I was happy to include his collar in the painting as he's always wearing it, but I didn't want his lead visible. So I had to imagine what the fur behind looked like. Thankfully the lead wasn't too thick.
Light colours painted first, then the darker ones layered on top. It didn't take me long to learn that white paint is not a miracle worker and won't appear white if on top of dark paint.
Finished! I went back to the mouth and added some more detail and some whiskers to his muzzle.
Things I'd do differently
I'm notorious for using media incorrectly. In this case I used acrylic paints like water colours which worked but the paper really did not have a good time. I actually had to iron this piece before framing it because of how rippled the paper was.
I also just need to be more careful with the paper in general. Next time I'll set up on a desk and not move.
The subject was chuffed!
