Top Dog

Our dog Kirkby on a foggy day at Lost Rocks 8x8 o/p
done from one of my photos.

Ok, it's a "studio" painting not a Plein Air painting, but I couldn't resist playing more with the limited palette (plus it was a great X-mas present for my girlfriend). I don't really have a painting studio set up, I've never had the room, which is why 99.9% of my paintings are done outside. So it was a great learning experience for me in the limitations of indoor lighting. Even though I set up my easel near a window in our sun-filled extra room, I still had to paint alot of this in artificial light. I had a "daylight" photo bulb in one photo lamp, a "GE Reveal" lightbulb that's touoted to have an "extended spectrum" or something like that in another photo lamp and I also had a high powered halogen work light. I thought that the mix of these would give me a balanced lightsource, but even with all those lights I could really tell that I was missing a swath of colors, and that seeing all the subtleties were gone. A bit like driving at night with sunglasses. You can stay on the road, but you know there's a whole lot of stuff you're not seeing. If anyone has a good indoor lighting set they'd like to share, I'm all ears. I took a few progress pics of this one too.



Here's where a preliminary drawing paid off for me. This was my original drawing, but after I had it transferred to my panel, there was just something about the placement that bothered me. I realized I had drawn him in too close to the top edge, which especially after it's framed would more than likely chop off the top of his head. Also, I noticed that his head was a little too centered. So I took out a fresh panel and transferred the drawing at a smaller size and moved him a little off-center. Subtle changes, and a pain in the butt, but better to have caught it in pencil than paint!

Blocked in with very thin washes