Scout

"Scout"

7”x10”

The subject of my creation is a painting of a dog, particularly one of my favorite dogs, Scout. I chose to paint this because I already had this photo of Scout and it conveys a happy/mellow mood. This particular emotion is what I was focusing on specifically in this project, so that's the reasoning behind this creation. I have previously draw this same photo -that I took- but it looks completely different seen through a painting. Scout is a family-friends dog and her cute emotions she conveys in her face, allows me to get a detailed painting of her.

I made this piece by using canvas paper, so the paint would dry fast. I taped the border with painters tape, leaving a clean border afterwards. I started by painting the background first with acrylic paint. I used a larger paint brush to cover large areas of space, like the background. Then I painted Scout, with smaller paint brushes, by mixing blue with white and black giving many different values in the face.

I used value and contrast throughout the face, by mixing a variety of blues. This gives my piece a stronger message and you can clearly see more details with many different blue shades. I experimented with the brush strokes I created, to add deeper values and contrast from the light and darker blues. At first I wanted to use many different colors on the face, although I soon learned that it was hard to get different values by using several colors, so I focus on one color instead. My next steps in this project would be to add something in the background to make it less plain, even if I add shades of gray, I think it would make everything stand out more.