Pet Portrait: Teddy, Christy, and Chloe
It has been a long time since I was asked to draw a portrait of three pets together, and I’ve definitely never done a portrait of this size. Not gonna lie, this portrait of the two Cavalier King Charles Spaniels, Teddy and Chloe, and their mixed breed sister Christy was a real doozy.
Random Tangent: Usually I have my portraits scanned, but because this drawing was so large I had to take a photo of the finished product with a camera. I gotta say, I have no idea how people do this regularly. I felt like no matter what I did I could never get the light to hit the portrait evenly across its entirety. I finally gave up after 20-30 attempts, so though the photo I ended up with was fine, it’s far from the best quality when it comes to accurately representing this portrait.
Original Photos: There were a few adjustments I had to make when going from portrait for drawing. Like with a lot of my portraits, the photos’ lighting and/or saturation had to be manipulated a bit, but I also had to color Christy’s right eye as if she wasn’t blind, and I had to use multiple photo references to create a body for Teddy since a large portion of his lower body is covered up. I definitely had my work cut out for me!
Paper Used: Strathmore Artist Paper - Bristol Vellum 300 Series cut to 21x27”
Because of the size of this portrait I had to branch out from the paper I usually use for my portraits, and I can’t say I was a fan of this new paper. Maybe I am imagining it, but it felt like the pencils didn’t quite take to it in the same way, and they had a different look to them when layering pencils on top of each other.
Prismacolor Colored Pencils Used:
Black - PC935
Cloud Blue - PC1023
Greyed Lavender - PC1026
Pink Rose - PC1018
Deco Pink - PC1014
Dark Umber - PC947
Dark Brown - PC946
Sienna Brown - PC945
Clay Rose - 1017
Rosy Beige - PC1019
Beige Sienna - PC1080
Ginger Root - PC1084
Peach - PC939
Putty Beige - PC1083
Cream - PC914
90% French Grey - PC1076
70% French Grey - PC1074
50% French Grey - PC1072
30% French Grey - PC1070
10% French Grey - PC1068
90% Warm Grey - PC1058
70% Warm Grey - PC1056
50% Warm Grey - PC1054
30% Warm Grey - PC1052
10% Warm Grey - PC1050
90% Cool Grey - PC1067
70% Cool Grey - PC1065
50% Cool Grey - PC1063
30% Cool Grey - PC1061
10% Cool Grey - PC1059
White - PC838
Other Materials Used:
Rembrandt Soft Pastel in Ultramarine Deep - Thank goodness for soft pastels because I was not looking forward to coloring the entire background of this portrait with colored pencils.
Progress Pics: No time-lapse video for this one since that just seemed like an unmanageable task for a project of this size, so here’s a bunch of progress pics. If you’d like to see posts of them as I go for this and other projects, you can follow me on Instagram here.
Time Spent: 203 hours and 24 minutes - I had a college professor once say that when thinking ahead to the work that will go into a project to guess how long you think it’ll take and then multiply it by three. This portrait definitely falls into that category. I mean, I knew drawing three dogs, two of which are longer haired, was going to take me a while, but my goodness!
Up Next: We’re coming up on the holiday season, which means it’s time to be secretive with what I’m working on!
Until next time! Lauren H.
Follow @BewareOfTrees