Brian McRae

“Pup”. 10″x10″. Acrylic on Cradled Wood Panel. Painted October 2022.

Seemed like time to do another dog painting. My usual approach is to do a graphite drawing first to work out composition and relative values. In this case I did two drawings ( faster sketch and a slower more accurate drawing of the dog). The fun part was doing the painting. Fortunately, the reference photo had an interesting composition, good contrast and the dog was very photogenic – looking alert and straight into the camera.

I also wanted to see what the effect of having a varnish would be to the painting. Because it is painted on wood and uses a lot of saturated colours, the final varnished piece really popped. I’m not sure that it is right for every acrylic painting, but in this case, I think it worked out well.

“Early Morning on Powell Lake – preliminary painting.” 
Painted October 2022. 20”x30”. Acrylic on Canvas.
This painting is a study to explore some of the colour choices and consider textures/techniques for painting this particular landscape. The ultimate painting is going to be a a much bigger painting (3 feet x 5 feet). 
The view for this painting is from a friend’s floating home on Lake Powell. I found this landscape breath-taking and I took a lot of reference photos. I find the coastal mountains often feel less rugged than the Rockies, but two of these mountains standout and are named Beartooth and Rain Tooth. My challenge is to capture a sense of the grandeur and movement in this landscape, balanced against the early morning light and tranquility of the calm lake. 
It’s an interesting painting, but I don’t think I’m expressing the feeling I am hoping to achieve. I’ll have to explore a couple of other choices before I try to tackle the full size painting.