Dobbie On The Sofa

Last night, when I nipped over to the Rose & Crown to pick up a takeaway (I had the duck pizza since you ask), the landlady suggested she might be interested in a portrait of her three dogs at some point and would send over a photo.  If I’m to do something about this I really need to practice drawing dogs.

The inktense pencils seemed like a good place to start.  I found a photo of one of their dogs, Dobbie, on line that might make a good starting point.  It was in black and white, so gave me a chance to go impressionistic with the colours.  I started with my usual favourites: deep indigo, violet and bright blue.  I also threw in some highlights on the dog in tangerine.

After this first attempt, I found that the dog didn’t stand out well enough against the sofa and cushion.  I should have remembered that my best figure drawings have little or no background.  So I tried adding some chilli red to the sofa and leaf green to the cushion.  I also added some sunshine yellow as a background.

But the sofa came out too red and the green bin the cushion was too similar to the yellow background, so I went in with a third coat.  I put more bright blue on the sofa, more indigo into the shadows, some indigo onto the shadowy bits on the cushion and finally, in an attempt to bring it all together, some sunshine yellow highlights on the dog and cushion.

I’ve ended up with something that’s way too overdone.  One for the bin.

But there are lessons here.  If I’m to paint dog portraits, I need to leave out the background. Maybe just go for vignettes with a little complementary background colour aura around them.  Or the sort of plain curtained background that I’ve used in some of my figure drawing.