Cocker Spaniel, Black

Finally!  I have received so many requests for a black cocker spaniel, and I have finally gotten to it on my huge to-do list!  Sorry it took so long for those of you who have patiently waited for it to be done. 

I'm also working this week on a commissioned German shepherd painting, which is proving to be a really difficult one.  She, Zoey, is lying in the snow and looking up at the viewer, so the pose is adorable but awkward at the same time, details are difficult to see due to the lighting, and it's just difficult to paint because it's a full-bodied painting on an 11x14 canvas.  But I think it'll come out great when it's completed.  It's a challenge but a good one.

I have another painting in progress, too, a standing German shorthaired pointer, for which I also get many, many requests.  It'll be completed sometime next week.  Oh, and one more painting in progress - and put aside for the moment! :  a single daffodil I had in my front yard early this spring.  I thought, oh, painting a daffodil will be so easy compared to painting dogs.  Absolutely not!  Not for me, anyway.  It's much, much harder for me -- but I will tame this daffodil eventually!

Cocker Spaniel Dog Art 8x10 Original Painting by Dottie Dracos

This painting -- finally -- is a composite of several photographs I've taken of a few cocker spaniels who come to visit me at Portland Saturday Market (I've become quite the popular one for dogs to visit. Honestly, I think they tell their parents that they want to come to visit me!) Anyway, I love this painting. My work is getting looser in one way and tighter in another. I like the direction I'm going -- for now, at least. There's one thing that bothers me a bit, though, that has nothing to do with my painting; rather, it's the base on which I'm painting, mdf wood. I love the texture of it and how transportable it is, but I have the feeling that it's sapping brightness from my paintings. Maybe it's just me and I need to work with brighter, warmer colors, but I get the feeling that I put the colors on brightly, and in an hour or two, they've lost a lot of their brilliance. The painting I'm doing today, an English bulldog portrait, I'm also using the wood, but this time I sealed it with a very fine coating of varnish between the pencil drawing and the initial color "laydown." (Is that a word????) We'll see if that makes a difference. Anyway, this painting, as usual, is for sale on my website. It's an 8x10x1.5 on wood, with painted wood sides, and it sells for $150.00. I also have clocks available, as usual.