This is a study of one of New Orleans’ iconic street cars, specifically the Saint Charles line, which are a national treasure and are on the register of National Historic Landmarks.
The intent of this study was to capture the fantastic late afternoon light as it enveloped the street car scene. There’s a lot of green, but the metallic nature of the street car is reflective and a distinct texture against the backdrop of the old New Orleans oak trees.
This study gets me excited to do a larger composition, which will have similar lighting but some additional details that I didn’t want to tackle with this test drive. I’m happy I took careful notes regarding the color mixtures, too. Always take color notes!
This one was a challenge for a few reasons. First, this adorable pup is a newly rescued dog one of my good friends adopted recently, so there’s the pressure of getting it right for a multitude of reasons. Secondly, Lyra’s stare is very intense in this portrait, so the need to capture that “what are you looking at?” essence is a new challenge for me. And lastly, Lyra has LOTS OF SPOTS!
Looking through the progression shots in the gallery below, it’s clear that there were a few challenges with the length of her snout. There’s nothing more frustrating than nailing a dog’s nose only to realize that it needs to be erased because you gave the pup a Pinocchio nose. Glad I did opt to erase, though, because it made all the difference in getting her likeness right. In fact, this composition reminded me that I frequently err on the side of Pinocchio noses, so I need to remind myself every time I start a portrait to keep it short!
Back to my friends who adopted Lyra…. she’s a lucky girl to have found such a great home! My friends live in a part of the country that lends itself to great outdoor adventures and plenty of room to run. While there were some lose leash walking and other training challenges early on, Lyra eventually figured out what was expected of her and what seemed like insurmountable issues became distant memories. It never ceases to amaze me how adaptable dogs are to the world, so willing to forgive and live in the now while embracing those who show them love and compassion.
Say hello to Wolfgang (Wolfy), who was willing to take a short break from his squirrel hunting to pose for this quick portrait. This is a smaller piece that isn’t quite as refined and complete as the previous Happy Lab portrait from last month, but the intent was to practice a couple of smaller drawings before taking on a more comprehensive composition.
This is actually the second effort at this portrait, the first having gotten off track just enough to warrant starting over. Despite carefully checking and verifying the dimensions and proportions along the way, somewhere along the process I inadvertently extended his snout, which threw everything off. It took me a little while to figure out what was going on, as the error was ultimately very small, but that seems to be the challenge with portraits – the slightest proportional error is magnified, but it sneaks up on you in a very insidious way.
I also wasn’t very happy with the focal point of his left eye in the original effort, which I had redrawn at least twice prior to discovering the proportional issue with his snout, so I decided to restart the entire composition. Rather than flipping to another page in my drawing book, I used the opposite page so I could contrast and compare along the way. The immediacy of the failed effort staring me in the face proved very helpful as a reminder of where the key problem areas were initially.
Final on Left | Initial Fail on Right
In the end Wolfy’s draft portrait came to life pretty nicely – see progression gallery below. It’s very hard for me to incorporate the variations of his brown, gold, and black coat, but focusing on the key patterns instead of every detail captured the essence of his inquisitive look and cute face.
This Labrador’s smile and overall happy, expressive face quickly caught my attention. I have no idea who this dog is, but I know s/he’s never met a stranger.
I thoroughly enjoyed the slow, methodical pace of working through this drawing. One of my focal areas this year is something I call “dogs in motion”, basically dog’s doing stuff (see Frisbee Dog), which remains my primary interest when it comes to dog related art. However, the challenge of doing a realistic dog portrait has always nagged at me, in large part because I could never figure it out. This composition is either a fluke, which is entirely possible, or something clicked in my art brain – my big, smushy, oft confused art brain.
The technical keys to this drawing, at least for me, were as follows:
Proportions: Free-hand drawing, no tracing is mandatory for me… otherwise I won’t learn a damn thing. There’s something elusive about getting the snout of a dog just so. Eye spacing and size of the nose, which is a lot bigger than you think, were also key.
Eyes: Oh those precious stares! The expressive nature of a dog oftentimes exudes from their eyes, but I realized so much of that expression is from the hair around the eyes, too.
Hair Strokes: The darker areas of the coat are a combination of different types of pencil hardness, but also more variations of stroke density, i.e. darker areas have more strokes, which is obvious now that I say it aloud.
Reference Photo
Hopefully the progression shots above are helpful to see the compositional approach. There’s a lot of bouncing around, but ultimately it’s about getting the eyes and nose nailed and then building out from those anchors.
It’s hard to declare any of the hundreds of bucolic coastal towns of Italy “the” iconic Italian coast, but Vernazza makes a lot of those lists for good reason. Granted, the crowds make it down right awful, but the windows of time outside of the hordes, or better yet beyond the tourist season entirely, show how perfection can be achieved. When it comes to painting, however, it gets a bit intimidating.
The reference photo is from a lookout along the from Monterosso al Mare to Vernazza, a beautiful stretch of the Cinque Terre that affords stunning views of the coastline, vineyards, and even some live music along the way. As we neared Vernazza on a cloudless day, the late morning sun lit up the colorful boats of the small harbor. It just had to be painted!
Vernazza, Italy (Cinque Terre)
The challenges with this composition were varied and steep. I actually started it in early April, then had to set it aside for a month because it wasn’t progressing as I wanted and a breather can help recharge the artistic part of my brain in ways that sheer obstinance cannot.
To be clear, it’s very unlikely I will ever paint another landscape from this angle, i.e. from hillside looking down at a steep perspective. Aside from all the unusual shapes it creates and skewing of details that you simply don’t see from a more familiar horizontal angle, it’s really hard to create a painting with depth when THERE IS NONE! I rarely yell in these posts, as I tend to be pretty even tempered and patient, so yelling isn’t part of my communication style, but in this instance I had to yell at myself after I came to the realization after having spent numerous sessions and countless hours on this painting that the reason I was having trouble creating depth was because there was virtually none. When you look down on a landscape at this angle, you absolutely kill the depth because there’s no reference in the distance. Hell, there isn’t even a horizon line, which means many of our painterly tricks to create depth as the scene recedes are non existent.
Despite the compositional challenge, I’m pleased with the outcome and I love the wide range of colors. And to some degree there is “depth” to the composition, namely in the dark shadows of the boats on the shallow harbor sea floor as well as the buoys floating on the water, helping guide the viewer around the painting. They look like they’re floating on a sea of blue-green, and, well… believe me, they are. Go see for yourself one day.
I’ve had the privilege of spending multiple vacations in Italy and am of the opinion that it is simply one of the most fantastic places in the world. The people, food, wine, traditions and, of course apperitivo time!
Aperitivo Time!
This particular scene is from a street in Lucca, Italy. The reference photo is earlier in the evening, just when the street lights go on, but I pushed the timing back a few hours so the lighting was more prominent. And just like magic, it was apperitivo time – break out the Aperol and snacks! If you don’t know what I’m talking about, rather than stumble through an explanation, just Google it yourself and promise yourself that one day you’ll go experience it first hand. Now back to the art…
This was another session to work on street scenes with people milling about their business (see the previous composition on this topic here, Lilliputian Italian Evening Painting). Ironically, the people were the easiest part of the composition, as the rest of the street and buildings took a lot of rework and adjustments along the way. Not sure why, but sometimes things don’t go smoothly. The other challenge was the surface of this particular canvas board. I had to really load up paint on the brushes in order to make progress, which was due to either the very toothy surface or the fact that it was very absorbent – this canvas board really drank down paint.
This piece is also meant to be displayed in softer, yellow lighting. It was an experiment that I haven’t purposefully tried to do in the past, but the result is pretty cool. See the side-by-side comparison below, one with “normal” lighting, the other under the yellow/orange soft light. I feel like it adds to the mood and to some degree makes the street glow.
Normal Lighting
Soft Yellow Lighting
Progression gallery below shows the block-in, early color layout, and final composition.
I’ve been working on a large seaside landscape piece for the past week and ran into a brutal reality… people! The focal point is a group of brightly colored boats sitting on very saturated blue green water, which has been enough of a challenge in and of itself. I had made good progress on that part of the composition and then realized how many people were in the photo along the harbor walkway. Initially, I thought I’d simply wave my artistic license wand and exclude them, but came to the realization that it would be very creepy and vacuous without people enjoying the sunny day.
Here’s the problem – I can’t paint people!
The large landscape is on temporary hold while I figure this out; I’ve bounced over to this small piece as a way to practice painting Lilliputians. This is an evening landscape, I have no idea where, but I’ve declared it to be Italian, which aligns with my current artistic needs. I kept things loose and painterly, but tried to leverage high contrast values to emphasize the lighting on both the building walls as well as the light spilling out of the restaurants. The people were put in last, and I’m pretty happy with the outcome, although I used 5 or 6 different brushes to figure it out.
Italian Evening Final
Italian Evening Progress
Block In
Italian Evening
One thing about painting people into a landscape – it will make you remember to step away from the painting repeatedly to see if they look “right”. To look at them up close is a real horror show – oddly shaped legs, disproportionate torsos, and some of the worst wardrobe decisions ever made. But step back 6 feet and they look fine.
There are also some areas of the window sills and exterior wall faces that were done with a palette knife, wet into wet paint, which worked well in terms of giving a realistic, aged look.
Some notes on color mixing:
Green awnings = cobalt teal + variations of yellows including cad lemon yellow, cad yellow deep, and cad yellow light. Darker areas are a more traditional mix of ultramarine blue + cad yellow deep + alizarin.
Orange red exterior walls = another wide range that used burnt sienna, cad red medium, cad yellow light, and ultramarine blue.
Lights = exterior lights leaned more towards Naples yellow and a touch of cad red light and white. Interior lights utilized the outside lighting mix plus cad yellow light.
Lastly, I finally remembered to spread the palette around the entire painting to balance the hues. This was especially true across the vertical faces of the building exteriors, giving the scene a better sense of continuity.
One of my dogs, Zip, is obsessed with 2 things in life: food and anything thrown. I used to think her love was exclusive to tennis balls, but over the years I’ve learned that not unlike her willingness to eat anything thrown into her food bowl, she will retrieve anything thrown across her yard. The day she trained me to sling a frisbee was a fond day indeed… for both of us. It’s her insatiable drive (dare I say “lust”?) to retrieve that inspired this drawing of Frisbee Dog.
No, this is not Zip, but the reference photo captures all the key elements of a dog in motion doing her thing. The face is particularly tricky, in large part because it’s obscured and squinty, which mutes distinguishing features like eyes and ears. But you gotta love the open mouth and all those frisbee hungry teeth!
The gallery includes a reference photo and two versions of the drawing. Granted, the drawing is a rough study and not intended to be a refined composition, I thought it was interesting to see how different photo settings can change the look and feel of a piece of art. Using the same source photo of the final drawing, one is set to sharper detail while the other uses a soft setting to remove some of the detail of the pencil strokes. Bear in mind this drawing is done in my sketch book on thin, see-through pages; there’s not a lot of teeth in the paper, thus the relatively rough nature of the drawing. Also, the entire piece was done with only 3 pencils – 2B, HB, and H. I think this type of subject would make for a good painting.
I’ll try a few more drawings of frisbee dogs and then make the jump to the canvass.
Yes, another flower! The Pink Rose started off as a white rose, but some prodding from my wife got me to adjust to something a bit more interesting and thus the improvisation towards pink.
I’ll confess I’m not thrilled with the outcome of this small piece, but I think it’s simply a matter of style preference. The style is less realistic than I’d like, although as a drawing it works well… but it’s not a drawing, so there’s that.
Pink Rose | Oil on Panel
The reference photo is a beautiful white rose, but in hindsight I can see that it’s flat and lacking variations in value. I didn’t figure this out until I was more or less finished with the piece, but it was a very valuable reminder that grinding through a painting isn’t always the right approach if your gut tells you something is off. I see a lot of paintings on-line that have this stylistic look, so I’m pretty sure it appeals to some folks, but, ironically, it’s not for me.
Pivoting from painting to drawing last week and finally made the time to finish this one. Squirrel Watch is pretty self explanatory – Wolfgang, my 3 year old rescue mutt, sitting in the yard watching the tree tops for the infiltrators!
One of my artistic goals this year is to improve my dog related art skills. I’m not a big fan of dog portraits, however, I thoroughly enjoy what I like to call “dogs doing stuff”, creating intrigue through motion and activity. Over the coming months I’ll work on various dog related pieces that capture the essence of dogs being dogs as they do their thing.
Squirrel Watch | graphite on paper
Squirrel Watch was done over the course of a few weeks – I have no idea how long it took, but I wouldn’t be surprised if I spent 6 hours on this relatively small piece. There were a lot of mistakes along the way, but nothing an eraser and some patience couldn’t remedy.
This isn’t a piece I would frame and hang, but I’m pleased with it from a progress perspective. It’s also riddled with lessons learned, so if you zoom in to see the details you can spot various styles and techniques.
Reference Photo
Squirrel Watch progress
Squirrel Watch progress
Squirrel Watch progress
Squirrel Watch Final
Squirrel Watch Final and Supplies
Here’s what I learned and need to remember for future drawings:
It’s not necessary to draw hair detail throughout the subject. In this piece, the emphasis should have been on shading and shape foremost, whereas hair detail should be secondary.
Draw hair details with a clear understanding of actual direction of the hair on the dog.
Work hair dark to light.
Most of the hair detail can be accomplished using 2B, HB, and H pencils.
Show wrinkles in the coat by changing the density of hairs, i.e. closer together or further apart.
Dog paws are hard to draw, dammit!
Blades of grass can be done by either individual strokes or by lifting out shading with a thin eraser.
Art Bern 