Thought I'd share a work in progress with this Springer. This is a piece for my portfolio, need to build up more work. Might as well show you the steps in my work.
I always start with the eyes, I can't stand the ghostly look of an animal with no eyes. Freaks me out,lol! The eyes really show the soul of an animal, and somehow I feel more connected to the subject when the eyes are done. The eyes are so important for likeness too, and it would be too frustrating to do all the work on the fur and end up with eyes that don't work if I left it for last.
I build up the eyes, laying down the black part of the pupil and leaving out the highlight area. I soften the pupil with a dark gray towards the iris. Sometimes I'll lay down a bit of blue in the pupil too, to create a sense of wetness and substance. The iris I'll usually start with a layer of orange or sienna, before I fill in the highlights and shadowed areas. In this case with yellow ochre, brown sienna and browns. I'll use a little dark gray for the shadows under the eyelids. I use a light and medium gray for the white parts of the eye, and a little red to add more realism. For the lines around the eye I always use a black Faber Castell Pitt pastel pencil, and soften the lines with a little brown on the lower lines. Last I do the highlights, pure white for the wet look and brightest part, softening with a little gray. Close up the eyes:
Next step is to block in larger shapes to get the basic colors down. At this point I'm not doing any detail work at all, I want to get the shapes right as this defines the bone and muscle structure of the dog. I'll also identify lights and shadows at this stage. I limit the colors when I block in areas, I'll do details with more colors later on. For the black areas I'll use a pure black, and will bring light to those areas later with blue, gray or browns, depending on the color of the fur. Starting to think about background too, but will leave it for later. I've used pastel pencils for the eyes, and switched to pastel sticks for the fur. Back to the drawing board now - see you later!
Various softies and pastel pencils on La Carte, 15x18" (30x40 cm)
Got a full set of Derwent Studio colored pencils, and had to try them. This is the first piece done with the Derwents. Testing a Derwent Colorsoft and Pablo as well, and have a few Primas in the mix. Gotta say I enjoy the Derwents very much, I'm able to get a good point to do details with. But the Colorsoft really seem promising, might add more of those to my cp collection.
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