I began Kensy's portrait with a pink/purple underpainting to bring out the warm and cool hues in his coat. Most of this underpainting will be covered with layers of paint, but I feel like it gives the colors more life in the final product. I then used some thinned-out black to map in the high contrast areas of his face.

Next, I began to work in the colors of his coat. I still have some issues with his body positioning and shape at this point, but I decided to push ahead and make adjustments later. I used a mixture of warm colors to paint in his fur. I mostly used my small round brush since the painting area is small and there wasn't room to use my angle shader.

At this point, Kensy's colors are still too warm and the likeness isn't quite right. I decided to paint in a background and then continue with adjustments once I could see the colors of the field and sky next to his fur. Here's Kensy with his background:

In the progress photo above, his mane is too large and prominent. The original photo showed Kensy standing, taken from a slight downward angle. After looking at some photos of Kensy sitting, I trimmed it down and used thin layers of white to tone down the redness and reduce the contrast of his coat.

With more wispy white layers, Kensy looks more natural. His coat is silker than I originally realized. The final adjustments needed were in his face; to trim down the sides, shorten the nose a little bit and flatten the bottoms of his eyes so he looks happier. Flattening the lower eyes a just wee bit is a great trick to make your subject look more relaxed. Here's the finished Kensy:

Here's the three dogs with their half-finished background:

I added some trees in the background and put some subtle hills into the horizon, to make the scene look like Copper, Kensy and Logan's local park. They look happy and at home.

Tags: background, finished, fur, bernese, grass, trees