Practice Dog Portrait with Dylan - Step 3

Second layers of pastel applied

What is wrong with my drawing of this dog? Do you know? I believe that I have an idea, but I will continue with my painting because this is a practice exercise. Learning a new subject matter does take time and mistakes are bound to happen.

During this stage of  the painting, I maintain my original large shapes and begin thinking about the colors that I want to apply under the top or later colors. I learned from painting my cat that the tawny colors work better with yellows as the under colors and that is why you see a lot of yellows and browns. Notice that Dylan still reads as a flat image. The modeling or making him look more 3-dimensional does not occur until the next phase.

Having never painted dogs, I am surprised by how much I am enjoying the challenge of this new subject matter. These are live creatures with individual personalities. It will be interesting to learn how to convey their character. You will have to keep me on my toes to make sure I do that!

Have you figured out what is wrong with my drawing of Dylan?

...to be continued.