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Sam | The making of

Illustration, Painting, Drawing

The Making of 'Sam'
This was a painting I made of my Border-Collie dog 'Sam'. I really wanted to capture the way I see him - that of boundless energy, warmth and loyalty.
I hoped to capture this by using my traditional quick and sharp brush strokes using my trademark Angelus Leather Paints (these paints are very expensive and you pay for the extremely high quality - blacks are much, much deeper and colours are more vibrant).
When creating these particular kinds of paintings I always go for a maximum of 4 colours. In this case black, blue, orange and yellow have been used.
This is part of a series of paintings I am currently making for my uni project "Sense of Belonging".
Sam - 2011
I always start off by simply smearing black over the paper (250gsm) and using very quick brush strokes to create those sharp edges. The more random shapes/patterns the better - in fact, there should be no pattern whatsoever.
Starting to outline Sam and blocking in some basic orange and yellow. I planned on having more of a yellow look so as to differ from my other painting.
Now that the main head is finished I start to apply a second head overlaying the first. This was drawn from reference.
Now I start blocking in the white to give a translucent overlay effect. Additional detail is also applied in black and the yellows are highlighted and black areas are deepened.
Fine tuning the line work.
As traditional with these paintings I begin finishing up with some quick flicks of blue to add just that bit more extra colour and detail as well as to unify the series.
Close of of the detail and the previous painting titled 'Sense of Belonging' on my phone.

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