“Vicki”

In this blog, I show you how I go about painting from a bad reference photo. It’s the worst photo, but it’s not great. I decided to show you what I think about when I approach a painting like this. I hope this helps you when you’re working from a lower resolution photo but you still want to create something realistic.

Vicki is a very special dog. When I first met her, she had just had her one leg amputated. I can’t remember why - it might have been an infection gone bad, if I remember correctly. But either way. she was full of life, and surprisingly quickly back to normal life. Which includes walks in the mountain, on the farm, with a pack of other dogs.

This is Vicki’s reference photo.

It’s pretty low res, and when I zoom in on it, it becomes very pixellated. The left part of her fur is almost a solid flat black, which won’t paint well, as is her left ear. The right ear is also dark, and where the forehead ends and ear starts is not clear. Even the black fur on her right is not clear, but this doesn’t matteras it’s such a small area and easily imagined.

I took the first photo a while into the painting, as often happens when I’m working early in the morning when it’s still dark outside.

I started with a line drawing, which I draw straight onto the Pastelmat. I used a dark brown pastel pencil to draw with as it would blend in with the fur colours.

After the line drawing was done, I used soft pastel sticks and pan pastels to do several layers in the background, darkening it slightly on the right where Vicki cast a shadow.

I then started work on the top left ear. Where I start a picture depends on the picture I’m painting, so it’s not always the top left. I worked several layers onto her dark ear, alternating between Black, Sepia, Indigo and Helio-Blue Reddish until it was as dark as I wanted it to be. I also added the slight bit or blonde hair peeking out at the edge of the ear.

Next, I moved on to the forehead area, using much of the same colours for the dark fur as for the ear, but with the inclusion of various browns and yellows for the blonde fur.

Then I worked on her eye, and blocked in some of the left cheek, before moving on to the forehead and the right ear and eye.

Here I’ve worked a bit more on the left cheek, as well as the body. I could see very slight indications of slighter fur colours on her body, so I tried to include those where I could. Any variation in a large patch of fur that seems to be one solid colour is helpful.

When I”m working from a bad reference photo, I either try to find any variation in colour that I can, even if I have to accentuate it more than it is in the poto, or I use some artistic licence to pur highlight and colours where I know they might logically appear in order to add depth and variation to the fur.(Or skin.)

By this stage, I’ve worked on most of the face, the nose and the tongue. While I work these new areas, I often go back to “completed” areas and add a bit more. In this way, I tend to work the whole image, going back and forth as I see the need.

This is especailly true with a bad reference photo, where I might see new bits of detail as I work a different area, that I didn’t spot before. Sometimes I will also choose to add a new colour halfway through the painting, but then I look for other places where I might include it to ensure cohesiveness.

Here I’ve covered most of Vicki, but the fur at the bottom and the bit of her paw on the bottom right need some work. She has strange shapes in her fur, which I only notice as I’m working on her. The direction of fur on her chest is also not clear, but it looks almost messy or fluffed up, so I make a decision to simplify it into a direction that makes sense.

I also add a bit of her green registration tag, which I enhanced a little bit. I decided to include it because the green complements the pink of her tongue beautifully and brightens up the whole picture.

And here she is - Vicki in her final form.

Working with a less than optimal reference photo doesn’t have to be difficult. If you look for as much detail and variation as you can, and enhance them, and also use your experience to add things where they might logically be anyway, it will help to being the photo to life.

Unless you’re intent of hyper realism, it’s worth remembering that you’re not re-creating a perfect photo replica, but an artistic impression on the photo.