The many stages of my painting process (painting Harvey the Westie)

In my spare time, when I have the motivation and mental ability to participate in more pro-active activities, I enjoy being creative. My main creative hobbies presently are scrap-booking (personal stuff with my own photos, tickets, souvenirs, etc.); painting, and writing (in the form of my fantasy novel i'm working on, or blogging). Yesterday, I was in the mood to do some painting so I decided to bring up a photo I've been long since waiting to get started on. This was a photograph I took of my boyfriend's parents' dog, a west highland white terrier called Harvey, whilst he was sunbathing in their back garden. It is here below:

I was skeptical about painting this because I planned to paint him onto a white canvas, and because he's kind of white already, I thought it'd be a difficult problem to get past. But I was determined to have a go at least, and see how far I could take it. Originally, I only envisioned getting the basics done yesterday afternoon, but a few hours passed and I found myself really getting stuck in, and I ended up finishing the entire painting. 

Whilst I went through the different stages of my painting, I photographed my development as means of remembering my steps and process. 

First of all, I had to get a drawing template down on the canvas, as a guide to make the painting easier, and to limit mistakes with the paint. I drew, with a pencil, the basic outline of Harvey, with a few details- his almond shaped eyes, his nose, mouth, collar, claws, and some fur. The most difficult part of this drawing was getting the shape, angle and position of his back legs right, but I seemed to have managed it eventually, with a whole lot of eraser marks on the way.

Next, I added white paint to the drawing, as a base (because most of his fur is white). My previous worry about white on white did announce itself upon me, but I discovered if I added more paint to the brush, and piled it on the canvas, the depth and texture of the thick paint distinguished it from the canvas. And, as a bonus, I used the thick textured brush marks as a technique to resemble the fur.

Harvey's fur isn't all white. There are actually fragments of it that are a pale creamy yellow. I mixed yellow and white to create a more vivid version of the actual colour, and added it to the painting in the correct places. I like thinking outside of the box when it comes to colour; I think, if you use exactly the same colour as in the photo, it instantly becomes an unimaginative copy-cat 'painting by numbers' piece. Adding more edge to the colours makes the experience more fun, and the painting more interesting, in my opinion.

My next step was to add the darker shades of his fur into the painting. There are quite a few different shades of grey in his fur, especially on the left side of his face, due to it being in shadow. I started to build these different shades up by first applying a light shade of grey in strokes on his face. As an added benefit, I used the grey on the outline of the drawing, in order to distinguish it more from the blank canvas, and build some dimension into the dog. 

On top of the light grey base, I added a darker shade of grey to more shadowy areas, and darker bits of his face (like his snout). Moreover, I delved into the finer details, using brown on his eyes and lining them with black (plus black for the pupils); black for his nose (with a dark grey to accentuate his nostrils); and brown and silver-grey on his collar and tag, respectively. At this stage, I feel like life was starting to develop in the painting. 

Further details were then put into the painting. I mixed up an even darker shade of grey, to outline even darker shadowed areas, and to add more depth and realism to the different colours in his fur. Also, the colour for his ears was compiled by mixing white and crimson. Again, I opted to have this colour more bright and vivid than in the photo, just to add a bit of contrast to the dimmer hues. His mouth was also painted on with brown, as well as the small dirt marks around his mouth. 

Not much extra was added to this painting, except from adding more white. Realising that I'd used too much grey on certain areas, I corrected my mistakes and went over the extra grey with more thick white textured strokes. This injected a bit more 'Westie' into the terrier dog. As well as this, I also mixed up a darker shade of cream yellow to add more depth, shade and shadow to his back feet and around his face. The back legs and feet were the most difficult part throughout the process, as I couldn't get the angle right, and the shading so that I could distinguish the two feet. I ended up drawing in a grey outline to the legs to make them more distinct.

And then, with the main focus of the painting, Harvey, more or less finished, I proceeded to work on the background. I kept this as simple as possible, as I didn't want to detract from the central important part. For the concrete paving he's laid on, I just used a big brush and dabbed various shades of brown and grey to create a dappled effect. Where his body was creating a shadow on the ground, I used a darker grey as the base, adding dots afterwards so that the shadows looked like they belonged to the ground still. The last bit from the background was the portion of the door and stairs leading into the kitchen. Most of his head fur was covering up were the extra stair would be, so I just kept things simple and painted in what would only fit on the canvas, which meant emitting part of the kitchen floor. The shadow on the stair was difficult to construct, as well as getting the correct angle of the door, but I think in the end they both turned out well. Finally, I touched up Harvey slightly, highlighting his outline with more white to bring even more dimension to the painting. 

Finished! Not perfect, far from it, I grant. But in my paintings I never strive for that. It was very fun, enjoyable and therapeutic to recreate the photograph, using only my imagination, and the colours and brushes that I wanted to use. Looking back at the finished result and the time I spent doing it, I am very proud and happy with myself for having the strength and capability to pull myself out of my anxious mentality for a while and put it into something I enjoy. Plus, the action of doing something pro-active and creative like this was a good stress relief, and left me feeling very accomplished.