Puppy Love - Step Three

At this stage I begin introducing local colour throughout the painting. I wash in flesh tones on the face and arms of the sleeping girl. I begin accenting details on all three characters in the picture. Simple washes of colour are blocked in on the blanket and cushions behind the figure. I block in the hair with a wash of colour, then add initial detail with burnt sienna. I do the same with the puppy and the teddy bear, then concentrate on adding the most detail to the central character, the puppy.

The teddy bear leans into the picture and the girl's arm leads the eye to the puppy and then to the girl's face. The flow of the hair leads the viewer's eye to the cushions in the background. These cushions act as a 'backstop', leading the eye back to the teddy bear and the cycle is repeated, keeping the viewer's eye within the picture, always returning to the puppy and the girl's face.

Puppy Love - Step Two

Once the drawing is well fixed, I tone the entire surface with a thin wash of blue-gray acrylic paint, thinned heavily with mat medium and water. I add some slightly darker washes of the same colour, particularly in the bedding. Next, I begin building form and detail to the teddy bear, puppy and sleeping girl. The last thing I do at this stage is to block in the background with a heavier wash of burnt umber.

Puppy Love - Step One

I thought it time I posted another painting progression, since I haven't put one up for quite a while. This is a picture I am painting primarily for licensing. Companies pay me a fee to use this type of art to illustrate a product such as puzzles, calendars, greeting cards, soft goods, etc. for a specified period of time.

This piece is titled "Puppy Love". I started out by doing a detailed drawing on illustration board. Once I am happy with the drawing, I spray it with workable fixative, then seal it with acrylic mat medium. I also give the back of the illustration a quick application of mat medium to prevent serious warping as the picture dries. If you only paint on the face side of the board, it will often curl due to tension caused by shrinkage of the drying paint. An application on both sides of the sheet counter acts this tendency.

Weather's Changing

I don't paint much wildlife anymore, but at one time, the genre represented a large percentage of the paintings that I produced. When I was a child, birds were my passion, especially the ducks and geese that frequented the Thousand Islands region. I learned much about drawing and painting by observing them and then trying to capture their likenesses on paper or canvas.

The Lesser Scaup or ‘Blue Bill’, as many locals know it, is a diving duck that will feed and rest in the thousands along the lower Great Lakes and St. Lawrence River districts during the migration south each autumn. They nest in the Arctic but they will spend the winter anywhere from the US/Canadian border to as far south as Central America.

This painting shows both male (purple/black heads) and female (brown heads) of the species, on a beautiful autumn day, but ominous clouds are building, suggesting a change in the weather is coming.

This painting measures 16 inches by 20 inches and it is painted in alkyd on stretched canvas.