I got the idea for this painting while I was walking my dog around the block. I passed by a woman who was also out for a walk and she and her dog paused to examine something they saw on the sidewalk outside their building.
I pretty quickly got a picture of how I wanted the final painting to look. Now I just had to get it to look like that.
This was my beginning charcoal sketch. I stuck pretty close to what I started with except the pose of the woman. Trying to figure out how much of the woman you should actually see was a challenge. Also her stupid hand! I wanted her to have a natural stance but the problem was getting a model. I finally got my daughter to pose for me but we didnt have much time so I wasnt as careful as I should have been with her hand position. lesson learned for next time.
These are some of the reference photos I used, including many many pictures of myself standing in different variations of the pose as well as computer 3d models.
This is an "in progress" photo. If you notice, I changed her left hand. I still dont know if I did the right thing. Also I tried glazing for the first time to adjust the color and the lighting in different parts of the painting. Its hard to tell in the photos but the final painting has much more of an "antique" finish to it (ala Mark Ryden). I'm gonna have to do another version of this eventually.
A Mark Ryden painting I used as inspiration
I learned a lot doing this painting. Dealing with straight, parallel lines, perspective, light and shadows, anatomy (of people and dogs). Also experimenting with different mediums to get different effects.
I CAN'T WAIT TO START THE NEXT ONE!
