A posthumous portrait of Nala, the golden retriever. A truly beautiful dog with a big personality.

Nala died a couple of weeks ago, suddenly and too soon. I often join my sister Helen, who owns Toto Dog Walking Services in North Glasgow, on her dog walks, and Nala was not only a regular walker but also an occasional boarder and has visited me on a few occasions too.  She is missed by the little doggie crew, and it is sad to think she will no longer join us up Peaton Hill here on the Kilcreggan Peninsula.

While creating this piece, I saw an online post requesting hints for increasing vibrancy with colour pencils without losing the ‘bite’ of the paper during layering and blending. As that was precisely what I was doing,  I decided to reply with my method, which some of you might find helpful or interesting. This is the method I employ when layers of detail are required.

  1. The drawing is lightly pencilled with a standard 2B pencil.
  2. The area being worked is treated to a watercolour wash with base colour.
  3. Paper should always be firmly taped across all edges to prevent warping while drying.
  4. When completely dry, apply colour pencil detail. To blend the pencil, it is safe to soft brush with solvent. It will blend the pencil without affecting the underlying watercolour base.
  5. Heavily blended areas like the nose and mouth are always brushed softly with solvent to allow extra detail.
  6. In this piece, the matting effect of the solvent allowed detailing of whiskers with a 50/50 acrylic dilution with an ultrafine brush.

#Strathmore grey paper, #polychromos pencils, artists odourless #solvent #acrylic paint.