Beloved

Nobody loves her dogs more than Susan Sabo, and nobody takes better photographs of dogs, with or without their humans. (She's a professional.) I have saved a few over the years that particularly touched me, and today I decided to try to paint from one.

This was pretty far outside of my capabilities, particularly this month, because I've sworn not to do any drawing first. So this picture started out with me doing a wet background around the outside of the two figures, trying for just their outlines, and then going back and putting in the details. That's more challenging than you think!

I surprisingly captured Susan's shape pretty easily, while Jack's supposedly simpler form eluded me—the body was too bulky, the nose way too long...I ended up having to go back in to lift and reconfigure several areas, and I even broke out the Chinese White in the end, something I have done on literally five paintings in my entire tenure as a watercolorist. (We pride ourselves on saving the whites by leaving blank paper where they go, and some watercolorists have nothing but disdain for people who use white paint. I've never criticized anyone else, but I've always tried to do without it in my own paintings.)

Anyway, perhaps I will try this one again sometime when I can pre-draw and get the proportions right, but here is today's painting, for better or worse.

DAY 25: THE BELOVEDS

#30x30DirectWatercolor2019

On 140-lb. Fluid watercolor paper using Paul Jackson paints...