A new commission in progress ...

Dilly • WORK-IN-PROGRESS detail • 8 x 10 inches • oil on cradled GessobordTM

Here’s where I stopped on adorable Dilly today. Dilly lives in Solihull, England, and his proper name is Dylan, but his family call him Dilly.

As a matter of fact, I know very few dogs who are called by their proper name. Our Trixie, Andy, Roadie, Matilda, Sophie and Blue are perfect examples of this. Around here we call them Trixie-Gooz, Panda Man, Roads (or Rodeo), Tilda-Whirl, Sophalita, and Blue Man Chu. The only one of our dogs who mostly goes by his proper name is Buster, because, well, his proper name is already a nickname, on account of he used to bust out of the backyard gate every chance he could get when he was a youngster.

Anyway, back to Dilly. He has white fur with sunny highlights, fluffy feet and is an absolute joy to paint. Here are my work-in-progress photos so far.

I went over my initial sketch in burnt umber acrylic, then added a glaze of burnt umber to Dilly and phthalo blue to his comfy surroundings.

 Next I added a black glaze to the surroundings and a glaze of pink madder to Dilly ...

 … and then a layer of caput mortuum violet glaze to Dilly.

 Now, after the underpainting is completely dry (I went and did something else for twenty minutes or so) I start with the oil paints on Dilly’s face.

I’m sticking with mainly blues and oranges for this composition; here are the colors I chose for my palette:
Mars black
Old Delft blue
French ultramarine
Cerulean blue
Sheveningen green deep (similar to phthalo green)
Naples yellow
Sheveningen yellow medium (similar to cadmium yellow light)
Shev yellow deep (similar to cadmium yellow deep)
Cadmium yellow extra deep
Cadmium red orange
Vermilion
Brillian rose
Quinacrodone magenta
Mars orange red
Burnt sienna
Burnt umber
Mars black
Titanium white

There’s Dilly, slowly emerging from the underpainting ...

 … and here are his fluffy paws. My favorite part so far is his reddish nose, with that little dab of a highlight right on the tip.When you’re painting an animal with white fur, look extra hard for all those different colors which is the light colored fur reflecting the light bouncing off surrounding objects.

Happy Painting!