Ruby

For colours, I used rose dore, Indian yellow, French ultramarine, burnt sienna, green apatite genuine, hematite violet genuine and sepia with cadmium red, cadmium yellow and titanium white used for spatters and a bit of highlighting at the end.  The first three on that list make up an orange warm key but there’s too much of the burnt sienna and primateks in there for me to be able to claim this painting to be in a particular key.  The rose dore and Indian yellow were chosen because of their orangeyness and the burnt sienna for its reddy brownness – these were all about fitting the colours to the subject.  French ultramarine was chosen with the intent of making a dark neutral colour for the eyes and nose but this didn’t really come off, which was why sepia was invited to the party.  The hematite violet genuine was chosen for its granulating effects and just to be a bit different.  Finally, the green apatite genuine was chosen for the background but also to be mixed in the fur in places, again to be different.  There was no place for burnt umber in this painting.  Burnt umber really seems to be tumbling down the pecking order.  Maybe it will be replaced in my palette with Payne’s grey at some point.

I started by putting down a very rough pencil drawing.  The main aims of this was to get the size, shape and position of the eyes and nose right, along with rough outlines for the snout and ears.  It wasn’t like the super detailed sketches you see on Landscape Artist Of The Year.  After this, I spattered on some masking fluid and masked out some highlights.  And then I started with the eyes and ears, doing one eye and the nose properly but only hinting at the second eye.  These are the things that really make an animal portrait and are well worth taking time over.  I should really have waited until these were complete before starting on the fur but I admit I did work on other bits while I was waiting/for successive ear and eye washes to dry.

In fact, most of the painting was spent going back and forth between the fur and the eyes & nose.  The nose caused me a few problems, being a little too far to the left and refusing to expand out to the right despite all my attempts.  For the fur, I really just enjoyed myself, adding whatever colours I thought Ruby needed, while trying to use the blue in the darker places and the yellow in the lighter.

The background is mainly green apatite genuine, painted in energetic diagonal strokes, sometimes softly enough for the white of the paper to be visible.  In places I’ve added a little bit of French ultramarine for some variety.  The granulating power of this green comes through, as does the granulation of the hematite violet genuine in the snout and below Ruby’s left eye.  I didn’t paint the right side of Ruby’s head.  There was no need as I’d already achieved a likeness.  But I did roughly paint a negative outline of that side of her head and allowed the fur and background colours to bleed into the white space that I’d left.

The final step was to add some white highlights and spatter over the white and the cadmiums.  I tried to put most of the spattering over the green background but if some’s on Ruby, that’s fine.  It’s not as if she never comes back from the garden without all sorts of bits stuck to her.  And after rubbing off any masking fluid and painting over any resulting highlights that were too bright, I was done.

I’m a bit shocked at how well this one came out but can see a few areas for improvement and expect I’ll be back to painting Ruby again soon.  I won’t be putting her up for sale because who wants a painting of someone else’s dog?  Oh, speaking of which, I don’t plan on doing commissions of people’s pets – the relationship with the animal is too big a part of the painting.  If that makes sense.