Barley & Meg Finished

I finished Barley & Meg yesterday and am awaiting approval. I've really been struggling to get a decent colour version via photo, the green background is more green in real life and both Barley and Meg have slightly stronger coat colours but at least the detail is showing in the photo.

It's Friday!!

Sadly I didn't manage to get the painting finished today like I had hoped but I did finally manage to get Meg's fur sorted and I'm quite pleased with the result. Again the colour is faded and not as strong as the actual painting but the photos give you an idea of how it's going.

Meg

I made a start on Meg today. The top photo is of the patches of colour I have put down to become the underlayers and then you can see in the bottom photo where I have started to put the lighter layers on top. It still needs a lot of work, especially as long fur can be very tricky to paint as it goes in all sorts of directions and yet still needs to retain a soft look.

Barley Finished

I managed to get Barley finished today, with the hope of finishing the painting by the end of the week. The bottom photo is the most similar in colour match to the original painting and the other two photos show a couple of the major stages of the painting today. I will no doubt start tomorrow with a bit of tweaking of the painting when I spot things that I might have either missed or am not quite as happy with as I am right now, but that's very typical of how I work and sometimes I have to remind myself to stop incase I go over a painting too much and end up spoiling it!

Barley

Just before I start the weekend, here is the latest update of Barley. Bizarrely I find tongues quite tricky to paint! Not sure why, it's mainly getting the colour right that I struggle with but it does seem like a strange thing to find hard to paint.

Barley & Meg

Here is today's update. I only managed to get Barley's neck finished today as I find I tend to work in certain sections at a time, the next section being her beautiful face, and I have to start that on a new day as my head will then be in 'face zone'. Strange how the mind works isn't it!!

I would like to point out again though that the lighting when I take photos of paintings on the easel is never the best (lots of light reflection on the painting) so the colour on this blog may not completely match the original but when I take the final photo, this is when I try to get it as near to the original as possible.

Barley & Meg

Time for a commissioned painting! This painting is of two beautiful Golden Retrievers, Barley and Meg. It's on a canvas size 20x16". I've decided to show lots of work in progress shots as I go through the day to help people see how I work and also how much work goes in to each painting. I've been painting lots of horses and short haired animals lately so had forgotten how much work goes into longer haired coats so thought it might be interesting to show how I achieve this.