This is Betty - a lovely black lab who looks as if she’s had a lot of fun in water somewhere. So my challenge was to paint a detailed pastel portrait, the same size and style of a previous commission. Black animals are often the trickiest to get right as black is such a dull colour to work with but I loved the shine on Betty’s coat and began with a sketch to figure out the shapes of the highlights and shadows. Then I transferred the sketch to Daler Rowney Ingres Pastel Paper, ensuring the grain ran the same way as the previous portrait and matched the paper colour too. I used a few hard pastel sticks of blue, white and black to block in and reserve areas of mid, light and dark tonal areas respectively. I quickly moved to using pastel pencils as the image is so detailed and the size is 9 x 12”. I used dark blue and brown in the shadows to keep the black looking lively before reinforcing the darkest areas with black. The basic shapes were blended using a cone-shaped silicon blender - always moving in the direction of the growth of fur. Lights and darks were re-established before various blues and greys were added to blend between the two extremes and this process was repeated a few times, always ensuring the basic shapes were maintained. After carefully blending the final layer in parts, stronger ticks and marks were placed to highlight the wet fur and deepen the darkest areas. These were kept sharp and unblended but were used to break up some of the larger shapes. I decided to hint at a background of stone using the same colours as I used in the dog’s coat along with a hint of sap green. I may come back and tweak a few shapes before putting it in a frame so I’ll stare a while longer…
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