Bados; a work in progress ©Xan Blackburn, 2011

My silken windhound friends correctly identified Bados in the hazy earliest stages I showed you in my last post.  I only had a little time to paint yesterday (had to drive to Seattle airport to pick up my hubby after a week-long business trip — Yeay!), but I’m really liking this painting!!  The glazing medium I’m using is great, but I keep learning things about its limitations.  Like, once you lay down some paint mixed with this medium, you have very little leeway for moving or adjusting it, and woe be unto you if you try thinning it with water, or blending it into a wetter area!  It just lifts in the wettest area, leaving a hard edge with a bald spot.  Not good.  Another limitation is that it’s hard to paint on top of with anything other than more glaze, which is not opaque (by definition), nor can you get fine details, since the medium makes the paint more like syrup than paste.  So: get all the fine underpainting details in FIRST!

There is a lot still to do on this painting.  Lot of detail yet to pick out on the puppy, and work still to make the background play nice.  I’m really happy with the sky, which you can’t really see much here.  I used a damp sea sponge to work in the clouds into the wet sky-blue paint, and it turned out very well.  Subtle.

The green field fading into the hills at the horizon still need some evening out in their tone, and I have a little finishing touch to add once that’s all ready.  The shadow at the pup’s feet will need a little more deepening.

Bados – Detail ©Xan Blackburn, 2011

In the puppy, I found just the right tint of burnt umber mixed with white to capture the pinky tones under his legs, and washed over all the shadow areas, it very subtly separates his living warmth from the cool of the green grass.  There are also cooling layers of blue washed into the shadow areas to tone it down, and cool the shadows.  The hot white highlights where the sun is catching the edges of his downy coat is a mix of lemony yellow and white.  His almond-shaped eyes are in better focus (he looked cross-eyed in the first stage, didn’t he?), and his brindling is established.  His paws still look a bit like hooves, but that will be resolved in time.

I’m anxious to get to painting!