Irish Setter

The last week has been a little erratic for me as far as work is concerned, my husband has been home all week and we have been out and about leaving me little time to paint.
I have been working on several paintings at once some of which are surprise presents so have to remain under wraps for the time being.

My oil painting of Misty the border collie has now been finished, framed and delivered to her owner so her place on my oil painting list has been taken by a memorial portrait of Cara a beautiful Irish Setter, the only ref photo is a very old, very small print with little in the way of detail so I am up against it this time however this is a breed very familiar to me so I am confident it will all fall into place.





The initial stages of my oil paintings are always shockingly ugly and I am loathe to reveal them but hopefully you will see an improvement as I progress.





As this is not a commissioned peice I have not done any groundwork I have simply worked freehand direct onto the canvas with thin paint to give a basis on which to rework and build each area untill I feel happy with it, on a commissioned portrait I would normally spend a lot of time drawing and measuring to achieve an accurate foundation before beginning to paint



Next I block in some tone to create a more structured image, at this point there are several areas that I know are out of kilter and will need some careful adjustment but at this point I needed to inject some life and expression into her eyes as a motivator for me to carry on.

Now that I have some life in her eyes I needed to sort out her muzzle area as there is little detail in the ref to help me it is mainly trial and error, I have also darkened the background and moved her left ear slightly which has balanced the portrait to a point where I am starting to see some progress, this now needs to be left to dry for a few days and I will return to finish Al Packer and a Jack Russell oil that has been drying.