Portrait Marathon: Bailey

Well, for all the flurry of sign-ups, we got off to a slow start yesterday.  The first few people weren't quite ready to roll when I was, so I skipped forward 'til I got to Eliza's Bailey.  Look at that girl!!!  *melt* (She even reminds me a little of our Happy, in who's honor I'm doing this marathon.  Happy was white, with just a little rakishly tipped beret of brindle over one ear.)

Since I got such a late start on Friday, and went to the opening day at the farmer's market this morning, I'm just getting settled in to paint.  The photo you see actually took a little time to get to.  The reference photo was gorgeous, in black and white, with a dark background.  Bailey's owner is a fabulous photographer!  But, since I'm painting in color, I thought I'd work out some of the kinks in photoshop and avoid back-tracking on the canvas.  It's subtle, but I have several layers of color on her face, besides the obvious coloring in the eyes and pink ears. There is some dark blue-violet just tinting the shadow side of her face, with a warmer yellow on the brighter side.  (It was about this point in the photo work that Eliza sent me the original color version of the photo!  I'd done enough work that I thought I'd stick to my colorized version in the end.)  The background gives an idea of what I want from the painted background.  The challenge here is that she's so light, but her nose and lips are dark.  The background needs to be dark to set her off ... except light around the nose, so it doesn't disappear, but seems to pop out towards you.  Photoshop makes it look easy; we'll see how the painting goes!

The drawing has been transferred to the canvas, so next step is to squeeze out some paint and GO!