German Shepherd Portrait Stage 2

With most of my paintings I like to work in an overall way, roughing in the paint across the whole canvas. So I use a big brush to block in all the paint first. Then I start adding the detail in layers over the first paint layer. Each layer gets progressively more refined (usually the brush keeps getting smaller too). This is one of the reasons most of my pet portraits are done in acrylic.

Acrylic dries very very quickly so there is almost no time needed between the layering. In fact the harder thing is to create smooth blends. Because of this, when I do a human painting I often prefer to work in oils if drying time is not a concern. Animal portraits are different as there are few smooth surfaces that need that type of  blending since they are typically covered with fur.

You can see in this stage of the portrait,  the paint in the background is still very rough while the areas around Diesel’s face have been worked further. I’ve also added a special sporty dog tag to resemble the one he wears.