Monte the Saint Bernard
17 April, 2008 Filed in: Dogs
I've started my portrait of Monte, the rescued St. Bernard from Dogster. Here's a detail shot of his portrait so far:
I started with a thin underpainting of purple to map out the markings on his face and define the features. You can see Monte's original photo taped to my canvas at the bottom right.
Next, I used black to paint in the areas of high contrast like his eyes, nose and the edges of his ears.
While the purple underpainting was still wet, I began to blend in color. I used a mixture of Red Iron Oxide, Burnt Umber Light, Yellow Ochre and Titan Buff for Monte's fur.
I added the light patches with the opaque Titanium White, blending them into the underlying layers.
As I added more detail, I switched from my angle shader brush to a smaller round brush to paint in the wisps of fur. I then brought in the rake brush for the smallest hair detail, especially around his mouth and eyes.
The last step: Monte's whiskers. I used the tiniest round brush I could find, and made several practice strokes on a piece of paper.
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