Painting Bella for International Pet Day
Greetings! Over on Lana’s discord community art collaborations are hosted for a variety of themes over the course of the year. This month was themed around International Pet Day on the 11th April, which asked us to paint our pets. I’m all for painting animals, but I was rather torn over which animal to pick this time! I ultimately decided to give Bella some love, as I realised that I had never painted her before.
The dog herself
Bella is my partner’s dog, who was rescued at an unknown age. She is roughly ten or eleven now, but it is difficult to know for certain. She’s a sweet dog, who enthusiastically demands pets and belly scratches from those she knows. There have been a number of occasions where I have been sat on the sofa, and she has placed a paw on my leg with a pathetic look on her face until I give in to her demands.
I never got to witness this myself, but my mother-in-law has told me about Bella making friends with a wild deer. The two would meet in the garden and chase each other back and forth. Bella chasing the deer, then the two turning around and the deer chasing Bella. For multiple days the deer would return to play with her, with Bella getting all excited as the deer approached the house. How cute is that?
Painting in the whiskers with white gouache and a fine detail brush.
Painting Bella’s portrait
Bella is a rather pale golden colour, with variations of white, cream, and even a slight ginger tone in places. Before I began the actual painting, I first turned to my sketchbook to do some prep work. I started with a rough pencil sketch of the portrait. To determine where I wanted to place her on the page, the angle of the head, iron out perspective, and to notice key areas that represent her likeness. Once I was satisfied, I noted down potential colours I was interested in using and also scribbled down a small thumbnail for the value composition.
There are near infinite ways to approach composing an image, and for this I decided to view the composition as four big sections of value. The left of Bella (to the viewer) would be L1 - the area in light featuring the majority of the lightest lights. The right of Bella (to the viewer) would be D1 - the area in shadow featuring most of the darkest darks.
I chose to separate the background into two areas gradually connecting together: noted on the thumbnail as L2 and D2. The lightest areas of the background (L2) would be placed next to the areas of Bella in shadow (D1), but without L2 being lighter than the lightest lights in L1. The darkest areas of the background (D2) would be placed next to the areas of Bella in the light (L1), but without the background being darker than the darkest darks of D1. You can do the exact opposite of this if you want to create lost edges, but for Bella’s portrait I wanted her to “pop” and stand out.
After composing these large areas of value, I then considered where I wanted to focus the details and small areas of contrast to draw the eye. These areas are the left eye (to the viewer) and her nose, in that order of importance. The left eye is an area of darkest value isolated within L1, the area of lightest values, which helps to draw the viewer’s attention there. I further emphasised this by adding more detail to this eye and the surrounding fur than the eye in shadow.
For the nose and muzzle area, I theorised a similar effect of contrast and detail would take place naturally. The area features some of the darkest darks (nostrils) alongside darker tones (brown spots on the nose, grey fur above the mouth). I also cast most of this area in shadow, further deepening the value. The whiskers and highlights on the small area of the nose in the light would add small details in a very light value (the lightest value - white), contrasting against the dark tones.
All of this was decided before I even put a pencil on the watercolour paper, let alone a brush!
The finished original watercolour painting of Bella, still on the paper block.
I stuck with my main palette for this painting, favouring my staple earth tones and gently granulating ultramarine blue. I decided to go with a natural-green background to show Bella’s love of being outside, and playing with a deer in the grass during her younger years!
