Saturday, November 14, 2015

A Portrait for a Piccolo

Two summers ago, we went on a family vacation to New England.  Before going on our trip, we planned to buy a piccolo for The Oldest to play in marching band, but ran out of time -sadly, a common occurrence.  In this case it actually worked out for the better, because when visiting Dear Husband's family, his niece offered us her piccolo that she hadn't played in years.  Fabulous! She wouldn't let us pay her for it, so I planned to repay her with a portrait of her baby - an English Setter named Shaylee.

Fast forward a year and a half and I'm finally working on her portrait...  Here are a few steps along the way.  After painting the background, I stopped taking step-by-step pictures because the fur required me to jump all over the canvas (with my brush, not literally, Silly!) instead of painting in steps.  My two younger kids had the day off school today, so I didn't get as far as I would have liked - imagine that!  But I think Shaylee looks pretty good so far.  I didn't realize that Middle Child took a picture of me painting (believe it or not, that is actually my arm), but I liked it so I decided to include it.  So, here I am painting in my kitchen.  Don't you love the classy way I taped my reference photo to a piece of torn, ratty cardboard - nice!  It does help help with light coming through the back of my photo.

Hopefully I can get back to her on Sunday while my paint is still blendable.  I've got a good start but still lots of fine tuning to do and details to add.  She's going to be so beautiful - just like in real life!


No comments:

Post a Comment