SUBJECT:

A beautiful border collie called "Wezley", essentially a black and white dog, but, as you will see, you'll need a lot more colours than that.

PHOTOGRAPH:

A digital photo, taken with a Canon SLR 300D. fitted with a telephoto lens at about 200mm. Taken outside in the morning on a fairly bright day. Printed on a Canon MP170 printer.  Wezley's owner is holding him by the collar. You can see her in the background. It doesn't matter. I'll paint in a less distracting background.

PAPER:

Canson Mi Tiente paper Colour 345. A warmish mid grey. I paint on the "back" of the paper as the "front" has a pattern of squares which I dislike. I clip the paper to a board with 2 or 3 sheets of spare paper underneath. This provides a softer feel to the surface.

PASTELS:

I use all sorts of pastels. Mostly Rembrandt, but also Art Spectrum and some Winsor and Newton. I also use black pastel pencils for the initial drawing. I start with the harder pastels and layer the softer ones on top.

GETTING STARTED

First I draw out the rough outline of the dog  using charcoal or pastel pencil. I pay special attention to the triangle formed by the eyes and the nose. Also the set of the ears. I decide to leave out the dog tag as it was a bit distracting, and moved the black area of the chest  to the right, away from the tongue. When I am happy that everything is in the right place, I go over the painting with a black pastel strengthening some of the areas that are going to be black.

Now I paint over the places that will be black hair using the side of the pastel to fill in broad areas, and paint in the eyes. The eyes are the most important part of the portrait and must have spark and vitality if the portrait is to be a success. Painted correctly, the eyes should appear to be focused on an object, in this case out of view to the left. This is the point where I know whether or not the painting will work.  I also put in the teeth (not too white, dog's teeth are always slightly yellow) and indicate where some of the white areas will be.

Using pink, white and red, I paint in the tongue. I use white to make it look wet. The nose  was painted in greys and black. Notice how white is used to make the nose look shiny, and the small white spot in the nostril. The white parts are filled in roughly with light grey and blended with a peachy colour to add warmth. I indicate some of the rough hair on the back of the neck with browns and grey.

Next I start adding some of the finer details on the chest and round the muzzle, and in the mouth. I start with coarse strokes and add finer strokes on top. Light grey is used to add shine to the head above the eyes. A simple background of black and grey is put in and rubbed over with the fingers. This "out of focus" effect makes the sharper rendition of the head stand out from the background. I usually leave the portrait on my easel for a couple of days at this stage, while I start another portrait. When I come back to it with a "fresh eye", any mistakes will become apparent. I hope!

Now I go back to the painting and go over the whole thing adding fine detail, especially where hair goes over the background colour and the raggy bits round the ears and neck. Knowing when to stop is the difficult part. I restrain myself from adding more and more detail. Spontaneity of line keeps the portrait fresh and alive. So this is the finished painting. All that's left to do now before framing is to sign it.