This is Jolanda's original photo:



Here's Jolanda's sketch:



I started with an underpainting of purple, and built up layers of reddish brown in Jolanda's coat. The purple underpainting shows through the warm tones and gives it more depth.

In this early draft, Jolanda's coat is too light. I looked at some different photos that Jolanda's mom provided, and incorporated the changes as I went.



I darkened her coat and added a background. I used transparent layers of orange and purple to bring out detail and depth in her coat. I made the highlights on her fur with transparent Zinc White, using my angle shader and very little water.



I rarely get to meet the subjects that I paint, since most portraits are done via digital photos through my website. However, I had the pleasure of meeting Jolanda and her mom at my studio in Mountain View last week. Once I had a better look at her close up, I realized a few final changes that I needed to make to get a better likeness in the portrait. Here's the finished product:



In the finished portrait, I darkened the area around her eyes, slimmed down her nose a wee bit, darkened her ears and added more fur texture and whiskers.

Here's a closeup of her eye:

Tags: cattle dog, Dogster, video, underpainting, sketch, finished