- Ronin 8
Now with color! Not quite done, but in the home stretch - needs a little scratching to fine tune and add back some lights, and then probably one more pass with color. This is two layers of color. I prefer to go a little lighter than I want and layer than get the color on too dark and have to scratch more than I'd like. - Ranger 3
More scratching on Ranger has softened his fur and blended some of the values. Some highlights scratched into the water has cleaned up the streaky look from when I initially added watercolor. Now Ranger is ready for color! - Ronin 2
More progress on the car. That "STAY AWAY" lettering took a while to get right, and I'm knocking it back with a tattoo needle. There's still a lot of "sketchy" stuff going on - just to block things in. That's the beauty of scratchboard, I can tidy all that up as I go along. There's plenty of blending work to do where the drawing shifts from positive to negative, and that section under his paws will take some time. And THEN I can start on Ronin! Since he's in front, I want to have all the underlying work done, so I can layer his fur on top - Ranger in Progress
This is a cell phone photo I took during the scratching process. It fits in between Stages 1 & 2 of the scanned images. - Ranger 1
Early stage of a 12" x 9" portrait of Ranger the German Shepherd Reference photo provided by my client Ranger loved the water, so that's what's going on in the background. It will taper off into black at the top, but otherwise it will look very much like the water technique I developed on "Determination" See it here: www.annran.com/website/gallery/pet-portraits/dogs/determination - Ranger 2
First layer of scratching on the dog is finished. Also some re-inking in a few places to add darks back in. Watercolor on the water too. That's streaky in places, but scratching in select areas will fix that. Next steps on Ranger will be scratching/re-inking to fine-tune and build depth. Then I can add color to him.