The Dog

My favourite of these 10 paintings is “The dog”. I did this in my art class and was taught by a portrait artist Nathalie Beauvillain Scott, who specialized in pet portraits.It took me three art lessons to finish the portrait.

First I had to choose an animal photograph to do the portrait of. I chose the picture of the black and white Springer Spaniel because I love dogs. Then I did a sketch of the picture using the grid method. I was concentrating on one square at a time which made the sketching easy and more accurate. It took me a long time but I was very satisfied with the end result.

The next step was to paint.First, I did a grass green background. I then moved on to the eyes as I thought it was the most important and hardest part to get right. I started with a base and carefully layering up to the highlights. Then I did a base layer of the dog and added more and more details, including the nose and mouth using a thinner brush.

I was very proud of this as this was my first oil painting and it turned out better than I expected it to. I found doing the hair on the dog quite difficult as it needed a lot of patience. I really like the eyes of my dog because it showed the dogs emotion in my painting. Overall, I am very proud of this piece.