Animal and Wildlife Art Lessons
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"Melvin the Hound"
By David Dowbyhuz
This detail more clearly shows the transition of the various changes in light. Up until now I have not really touched on one of the ultimate bugaboos in painting: edges. In most compositions you’ll want to strike a balance between hard and soft edges. The harder the edge, the more your eye is attracted. Softening the boundaries of areas outside your center of interest will make that center work harder for you. Fur by nature is soft. You can better see here the use I’ve made of green on his hind leg. To create the illusion of fur I simply extended the darks from the core-shadow well in the light. This was allowed to dry, and I then went over with a stiff mixture of white and stroked in the fur. I then darkened the tones beneath that leg, then rubbed in some reflected light on the under-side of the limb.
The waggy tail tip is now complete.
From the beginning, I wanted his right eye and the sunlit whiskers to be my focal point. Of the whiskers, I isolated the one that was critical to me, and that was the one curved whisker. Holding my breath, I got it right with my first stroke. I used a Liquin-ified mixture of titanium white and a 4/0 brush. The other whiskers, not too many, were easy to add.
This is it! I harmonized some more colors. I have darkened his back, the under-side of his hind-leg to bring his one visible hind-paw into sharper relief. I also darkened his front, the left-paw in shadow, belly, side, left-ear, and all the body creases; nearly everything!
This completes the painting.
B i o g r a p h y
"I've been at this painting business for well over 20 years now, and I'm going to stick with it until I get it right, or get paid, whichever comes first!"
Dave Dowbyhuz currently resides in the wonderful city of Montreal in Canada, along with his wife Melody (Fidget). With little credit to him, they've raised three delightful children, two grown boys already braving the big, bad world, and a college-age daughter. Not yet managing to "paint for a living", he simply lives to paint.
E-Mail: dowbyhuz@total.net Web Site: www.DavidDowbyhuz.com
This Article Was Oringinally Published On Wetcanvas.