Another Look at that French Bulldog

Left: 40-minute acrylic color study that I made from a sketch of a French Bulldog. The actual painting is 11 x 14, shows the full dog's head, and has a margin of orange at the top. It just wouldn't fit on my scanner. Click on the image to view an enlargement.

I've only got about 15 minutes of computer time today. I thought it would be fun for regular readers to see this color study that I did using the brush pen drawing I made on April 28 and posted with Journal superstition #6.

The painting in this post is one of those quick things you do, remember, in the odd minutes of your life. I had turned this sketch into a print. Which I really liked the line quality of, as it captured a lot of what I liked in the brush pen sketch. Then the print was staring at me for so long that I decided I wanted to do something else with it.

Originally I thought I'd do a gouache painting, realistic color, etc. But the other thing that was staring at me from the work table was a Fredrix Watercolor Canvas board that I had prepainted with acrylic paint. (You can see this board if you go to the print link in the paragraph above and scroll down to see the "parts" photo. The board is sitting on the table under the acetate sketch. You'll see it's blue, green, and there is a lot of metallic gold.

Well this board has been sitting around for a long time and Monday night I just had had it. I decided to do a quick color study. I'm trying to paint looser. I did do some colored pencil thumbnails for color, but once I got into this lavender, well that's it.

It was late, I wanted to paint something before going to bed and knew that if I got into a gouache painting it would take much more time at this size, so I got out the acrylic paints (mostly tubes from Daniel Smith and Golden). Earlier I had made an enlargement of my sketch and transferred it to the board using Saral Graphite Transfer Paper.

When I was painting I did leave the background colors to show through in a couple places, and you can see the gold paint, which I had originally applied with a textured brayer (something I'd carved a pattern into) as a texture, but none of the gold shows through.

Right: here is a close up of the chin area where you can see some blue from the original background, and see the gold texture, but no gold. Click on the image to view an enlargement.

I work pretty fast with acrylics and simply blend on the board. I worked mostly with a filbert that is about 1/2 inch. You can paint a lot of details with the edge of the brush so I only had to use the round to sign the painting and put detail in the eyes.

It's an odd painting, and not what I had in my mind's eye when I started, but I thought I would share it here because you've seen the original sketch and the print. I might paint a tightly rendered painting of this dog in gouache, before I leave it. I think I have enough information to do this. Maybe I'll have to go out searching for another French Bull Dog!

So, the point (I like to try and have one)—revisit a sketch in a variety of media and play with it and see where else it leads you. You might not like each piece that you end with, but you will come away with more and more information to use at a later date.

And my time is up, I have to get off the computer.

Comments

[Ricë]

roz, i LOVE this! it's fabulous, and you know i'm not a Dog Person and i don't even find french bulldogs attractive, but he's gorgeous! print some notecards from this--do a series of brightly-colored dogs (and cats!). i'd buy sets, for sure! i think it's the combination of unexpected color and then the realistic eyes = fabulous!

[Roz]

Thanks Ricë, I am working on a series of minimalistic dogs but I hadn't thought of note cards!

Like you I don't find French Bull Dogs attractive AT ALL, until I started seeing them at the dog park and then I don't know what came over me but there is something about their little muscular bodies hopping and running about with all the big dogs, acting like a big dog, and then of course those amazingly comical bat ears which they don't think are comical at all.

Dick is beginning to worry that I'll end up with a small dog! Nah, I'll just paint them.