“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.