In this tutorial, I’ll be painting a dog portrait using watercolours. ‘Milly’ the cockapoo is the chosen subject. I rarely draw in my subject with pencil first. I choose to block in the shapes of colour that I see. I love to work with complimentary colours such as teal and rose. Particularly with transparent colours that granulate. I work with a ‘block in’ technique with puddles of colour.

Materials

Colours used:

For this tutorial I used Daniel Smith Extra Fine Watercolours and Winsor and Newton Professional Watercolours:

• Raw sienna
• Cerulean blue
• Cobalt teal blue
• Quinacridone rose
• Carbazole violet
• Transparent yellow
• Payne’s grey
• Ivory black
• Chinese white

Paper:

• Arches cold pressed block

Stage 1:

I used cobalt teal and quinacridone rose together to make a purple and blocked in shadow of the eye areas and to the nose and chin. I also added in a tiny bit of raw sienna and transparent yellow where the chin merges into the face.

Stage 2:

Next I added in dark the shapes of the iris’s the eyes and also the shadows of the nose using Payne’s grey and Carbazole violet mixed together.

Stage 3:

I then worked more into the eyes with a smaller brush and with a touch of ivory black added to Payne’s grey to add depth.

Stage 4:

Next I worked into the shadows on the fur a little more. I mixed puddles of cerulean blue and rose together under the chin and round the sockets of the eyes.

Stage 5:

I then made light puddles with cerulean blue and rose to the top of the nose and worked more Payne’s grey round its edges to re-shape it.

Stage 6:

I used ivory black and Payne’s grey to ‘bite in’ around the dogs white fur to create a contrasting background.

Stage 7:

The white fur now needed more interest so I added puddles of raw sienna mixed with transparent yellow to create variety.

Final stage:

The final stages involved a smaller brush creating tiny puddles to refine all the areas previously painted. I added Chinese white with a small brush to describe the fine hairs around the mouth. These last stages are time consuming but integral to making a coherent portrait. Tread carefully at this stage and work with small amounts of paint as not to over work the portrait.