Experimenting with line

dachshund painting



My travels are over for the moment and I am once again comfortably surrounded by the North Carolina mountains.  Although I have been guilty of blog neglect (still!!), I have not been guilty of "creative neglect".  Perhaps because I didn't do much painting while traveling, I've been painting nearly every day since we returned.

Before we left on our trip, I planned to paint all along the way.  Rather than try to find room for stacks of panels to paint on, I divided large sheets of 140 lb watercolor paper into 6" x 8" pieces and then gessoed both sides.  I brought my water-mixable oils with me and figured that covering both sides with gesso (just one coat) would give the paper a little more thickness and would also keep the oils from soaking through. 

Since I didn't paint nearly as much as I thought I would, I came home with lots of these gessoed pieces of watercolor paper.  They are great for doing studies on.  And that's exactly what I've been doing since returning home.  Until yesterday, the studies were all from our Great Out West Adventure trip, but then.....

Tim Gagnon, an artist I recently discovered, posted a short video on his Facebook page about a painting he did from a sketch.  His painting is really fun and totally inspired me to give it a try.  (here's a link to his blog, where you can see his painting - it is titled "Ball") He painted on a very large canvas, but I did mine on one of my little 6" x 8" gessoed papers.

This was really fun! Keeping in mind I wanted to stay loose, I sketched directly onto the paper with Ultramarine Blue, then painted the background with a mix of Naples Yellow and Titanium White.  The dog was painted with a mix of Burnt Sienna and Naples Yellow and Titanium White.  After the paper was covered, I went back and re-painted the original sketch lines with a mix of Burnt Sienna and Ultramarine Blue.  A few more touch ups and done!  And only a couple of hours.  Considering that I'm might spend more like 10 hours on a painting this size, that's pretty cool.  

I want to thank my friend, and amazing Dachshund Rescuer, Kathleen Sioui, for the photo.  

Thanks for stopping by.....

susan

Comments

Anonymous said…
Nice picture of a sweet little pup!