August Pot Luck! #26

The Trouble With Dachshunds! (Part 1)

I'll throw my hands up in exasperation with this one! I've been trying to plot out a composition on canvas from a photo i took the other week at the Pride March., and, well it's been a struggle.

Usually i like to paint straight on to the canvas after toning it. Sketching in the shapes freehand, then shading in the darkest areas etc...but, this time....well a wee Dachshund isn't sitting at peace!.

As you can see in the image below i've tried to sketch him in 5 or 6 times before giving up the ghost.

Poor wee blighters been drawn in and erased a few times!

I left the piece for a couple of days before sketching the composition on a new canvas (i'll just paint over the previous one). This time I decided to mark out a grid..using the rule of thirds.

The wee fella looks proportionally better!

You can see that it's made it a lot easier to check on proportion size. In the original piece the Dachshund looked like a big bear beside the human legs!

Putty rubber erased grid lines and given a toning ground.

In the image above you can see that i've used a putty rubber to erase the grid lines. I should've erased the other pencil lines a bit before sketching over with acrylic but, well i couldn't find it anywhere. (Messy artist)!

I've also stained the piece with a light tone, it helps, especially with painting light colours or white against the canvas.

The next stage will be to mark in the darkest tones, and i'll go into that in Part 2.

Have a creative day the now, and i'll see ye tomorra!

​Davy