Brodie and McGee Continued

One of the trials and tribulations of creating art is knowing when you have "finished" a painting. I am often guilty of "overworking" a piece.....continuing to work on a piece when I should have stopped. Even being aware of this tendency...I did not have that feeling of being finished with the painting of Brodie and McGee...but wasn't quite sure where to go with it. When this happens I have a number of strategies that often help. A good practice is to leave it and come back later...at least a day later. Sometimes I just put the piece where I can see it as I am going about my business. I will also look at a piece in a mirror. All of these are very useful and often result in my figuring out what the piece needs. But I also like to take a piece to friends and get their perspective and advice. That was what I decided to do with Brodie and McGee. My friend Toni is a retired art teacher and a wonderful artist who always has great insights and advice. As usual it was a great help. I knew I wasn't happy with the blanket the boys were laying on and she helped me to see how I could make the folds more realistic using stronger value changes. As we discussed the hard edges of the toplines of the boys that were bothering me I realized I needed to change the color so that the boys would merge with softer edges into the background. Toni had some suggestions about value changes for the background as well. Toni also pointed something out that I had totally missed. McGee's back needed to be repositioned to emerge from above his nose...not his ear. Bingo....a much improved piece!!! Now I feel finished! Here is the final piece, "The Jones Boys".

Brodie and McGee

My sister Gail and her husband, Steve, have two delightful Shih Shu dogs, Brodie and McGee. I offered to paint them some time ago (quite some time ago actually). Gail and Steve sent me pictures and I gave it a try. That first try was pretty sad and never got too far. Well.....I decided to give it another try. I figured I had grown as an artist and had new skills and insights to apply to the painting in the months since my first try. This is the picture of the boys that Gail and Steve originally sent me:

My first try was partially a failure because I tried to duplicate this photo minus my sister's leg.....didn't work. After a few months of thinking and many new insights about composition and design, I knew that I wanted to change this photo to have the boys next to each other and resized due to their change in position. This decision called for learning how to move sections of photos in Photoshop. Success!!! Here is the result:

So now I have a composition that makes much more sense. I also knew that I needed to come up with a different blanket and background so as not to compete with the focus...the boys!! I started out with a background that was similar to the blue couch in the photo with indications of the texture weave. I also had a blanket with the beginning of a texture weave. Once I achieved that stage...I realized two textures would also compete with the boys. Here is that stage:

As a result I decided to eliminate the majority of the texture in the background and only have texture in the blanket. I also began putting in more color in the boys. At this point I worked on their eyes which always brings a portrait to life.

As I looked at the portrait at this point I decided there was too much blanket and background. I decided that a crop would bring the focus fully on the boys. I taped off the new borders and continued to build the color and texture in the boys.

After adding more detail and adjusting color I decided it was time to get my sister's opinion.....was I close? Did I catch their expressions? Did it look like the boys? What would she want changed? Here is the cropped photo. I took this while the painting was still on my easel and not outside in natural light so some of the colors are not as brilliant as in the painting.

Gail and Steve felt that I had nailed the personalities and expressions of the boys. Yeah!! The only request was to darken the right ear of McGee (on the right). I will make this change and some finishing touches and "The Boys" will be ready to be shipped to Michigan!

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