"Soul Mates" Portrait

Here is a step-by-step 9X12 portrait of a little girl and her dog.  It was done using Prismacolor colored pencils on Canson heavyweight drawing paper.

I worked on an overall wash of indigo blue, leaving the lightest areas untouched. Next, I added dark umber to the grassy areas.  Using an electric eraser, I erased blades of grass and filled them with apple green, canary yellow, and white. I used the same greens for the leaves and darkened areas with more indigo and tuscan red.

 
 In this step, I began the dog.  He is a newfoundland/saint bernard mix. I began with the eyes and nose because I find them to be the hardest to work on.  Once they were done, I added fur direction to the face and body with indigo blue, dark green, and red.  I think layering the colors to make black gives more depth to the fur.

 Here, I began working on the little girl's eyes and mouth first.  I also applied a light layer of peach to the shadows in the face and then a light layer of cream and light peach over everything but the hair.  I left the highlights in the hair untouched and added a light layer of jasmine to the rest of the hair.



This is the completed portrait after applying many layers of color. I sprayed the finished painting with Lascaux fixative to preserve the colors.