This detail more clearly shows the transition of the various changes in light. Up until now I have not really touched on one of the ultimate bugaboos in painting: edges. In most compositions you’ll want to strike a balance between hard and soft edges. The harder the edge, the more your eye is attracted. Softening the boundaries of areas outside your center of interest will make that center work harder for you. Fur by nature is soft. You can better see here the use I’ve made of green on his hind leg. To create the illusion of fur I simply extended the darks from the core-shadow well in the light. This was allowed to dry, and I then went over with a stiff mixture of white and stroked in the fur. I then darkened the tones beneath that leg, then rubbed in some reflected light on the under-side of the limb.
Th waggy tail tip is now complete.

From the beginning, I wanted his right eye and the sunlit whiskers to be my focal point. Of the whiskers, I isolated the one that was critical to me, and that was the one curved whisker. Holding my breath, I got it right with my first stroke. I used a Liquin-fied mixture of titanium white and a 4/0 brush. The other whiskers, not too many, were easy to add.

This is it! I harmonized some more colors. I have darkened his back, the under-side of his hind-leg to bring his one visible hind-paw into sharper relief. I also darkened his front, the left-paw in shadow, belly, side, left-ear, and all the body creases; nearly everything!

This completes the painting.

It was odd for me to condense over a month of time into these few pages, but I hope you can find one or two things of value.

As I said in the beginning, this process is very adaptable and forgiving. I encourage you to try and adopt some (or all) of it in your own work.

Thanks for staying with me

For the complete article on Melvin's portrait click here