Acrylic Dog Portrait: A million tiny hairs

Over the past month or so I've been working on an acrylic portrait of a dog, picking it up on and off when I've had time.

It's finally finished and will be given as a surprise for its new owner on their birthday this week.

The background was the first thing I painted, leaving the dog shape in the middle white. In hindsight I should have painted the whole background, then sketched out the dog afterwards.

I ended up having to repaint the background because there were some little white gaps around the dog and I couldn't match the colour perfectly to fill them in.

Anyway, we learn from our mistakes and, even though it took a little longer than it probably should have, I'm pleased with the outcome.

For anyone interested, I used Daler Rowney acrylic paints on acid free 240g acrylic paper. It's got a nice texture which is visible in the photo above.

While working on this pet portrait I did a bit of research into acrylic techniques and discovered the wonderful artist Marcel Witte. For my next project I'm going to try his technique of painting the background and blocking all shapes out first.

To deliver the painting, Sam and I took a trip to South Devon this weekend. It was a great chance to meet up with all our friends and we even got out on the water on Saturday in a friend's boat.

I was disappointed not to have brought my wetsuit as the guys were wakeboarding and it looked like so much fun!

Here are a couple of snaps from the wakeboarding session near Torquay.

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I'm sharing this post on the following blogs:  Handmade Harbour, Paint Party Friday Manon Popje's Illustrations, Nifty Thrifty Things, Be Different Act Normal and Tatertots and Jello.