CRAFT NIGHT with erinmakesstuff! [aka. My 52 Project: Week 4(ish)]

Welcome to the first erinmakesstuff craft night. To set the scene, I just got back from Zumba [<3] and took a shower and it's about 9:30pm. It's Wednesday and this project will, if all goes as planned, be a bridal shower gift for my awesome monster-lovin' friend Ashley. Bridal Shower gift = gotta get done by Friday. I plan to get it done tonight. It's craft night and this time we're painting. Ready? Set? Let's do some last minute craftin'.

Inspiration:

Ashley and Mike love going to concerts and a few months ago I went with them to see Iron and Wine. It was great. I'm not good at music criticy stuff so I'll leave it at "great." Last time I visited their house I saw The Shepherd's Dog CD lying on their table. Then I got an idea. They have two dogs so maybe I could mimic a similar style and paint portraits of their daschunds, Lily and Sophie. 

Results: 
So... the results were far less colorful than the inspiration. As I was painting, all the brighter pinks and purples ended up more muted tones. I could have fixed that simply by using a different blue to mix my purples or by glazing pinks over the lighter areas. I'm going to keep them as is since they turned out cute. I hope Ashley and Mike like them!

Thanks for looking! Below are pictures of the process... you may have to click "Read More" to see.

Process:

Here's what I used: 2- 8" squares of 1/2" plywood, acrylic gesso and acrylic paints. I also printed out reference images of the two dogs and had a variety of different sized paint bruses.

To start, I lightly sanded the edges of the boards and painted the tops and sides with white gesso to prime them. Colors look brighter when painted on white. If I painted directly onto the brown plywood, colors could get muted out.

I didn't bother to let the white paint dry. I squeezed out some yellow acrylic, thinned it down a bit with water then sketched out the basic outlines of the dogs. If I didn't like a line, I just painted over it with white. 

I decided to go with yellow backgrounds, just like the inspiration image. To add some interest, I mixed in some brown and red.

Next step was to add my darks. I mixed indigo blue and red to get a deep purple [don't use black!] and blocked in the darks and shadow areas of the dogs.

Then it gets to the part that gets a whole lot less step-by-steppy. Using just white, indigo blue, red and... that's it, I think... I loosely painted in the rest of the dogs. I mixed a lot of the colors right on the painting and kept the brushstrokes. I painted a brighter yellow over the background, but then changed it back because it looked green and nasty with the purples in the dogs. Not a huge project [it only took a few hours] but a heartfelt one. I nailed some frame hanging thingies on the back so they'll be wall ready once gifted. I'm excited to see what Ashley and Mike think!