Springer Spaniel Portrait

I'm still keeping my hand in with animal portraits, always learning new techniques and continuing to develop a distinctive style. With this one I added a background from another photograph and used a very detailed approach on his head, almost painting every fur! This is something I always find myself compelled to do, even if I try to use a looser style! It can be a very time consuming way of painting.

So much to learn!

I'm constantly painting but usually my work is from photographs and I'm conscious that I need to keep up with my drawing and also keep developing my knowledge of values, composition, colour etc. It's good to be inspired and learn from others on the web (and there is so much shared knowledge out there, it's wonderful) and also from books, some of which are better than others. I'm currently working my way through 'Drawing on The Right Side of The Brain' by Betty Edwards which is very helpful, going right back to the basics of how to draw. The first exercise is to make a representation of the 'picture plane' out of a piece of glass, look through it at your hand and make marks on the glass to map out your hand on the surface, then use this map to draw the hand on paper. My attempt is shown on the left.