watercolour portrait of a dachshund

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The Pet_Portraitist

"watercolour portrait of a Dachshund"

dog portraits--.>

6 years earlier, this very elegant old lady had given me a commission for a graphite portrait of her dachshund. She just called me back to commission me a watercolour portrait of her young dachshund. Here is this charming little pup, a dachshund 19 months old.
I' ll show you the reference photo. It was a rainy day and the pet was inside in front of the window. There was not enough light for my 200 asa film. As I was trying to interest the dog, I was mewing. That's why he is leaning his head so. But my photo was blurred.
Underneath I show you interesting details

superrealistic watercolor portrait of dachshund by Cyrille Jubert

I had to invent the left part of his face, I could hardly see where the left eye was.
Here are details of these two eyes.

superrealistic details of the dachshund fur

As you see, a "supposed" hyper-realist portrait is a mix of very tiny details and blurred wet on wet parts.
There are many layers.
The first ones are really wet on wet.. then I had strong colours and tiny details.. lighter colours first, then darker and darker...

At the end, I take the time to forget my painting and come back hours later with a fresh eye. At the first glance, I try to find what is wrong. Most of the time, the answer is "contrast" and contrast again. The question you have always to ask yourself is , where is there direct light and where are the shadows.
On the picture on the left, you can see that I added a wet on dry layers with really dirty water, to darken the fur in the shadow. It allows in the same time to melt the fur and give an interesting blur.

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I got two other dachshund portraits on commission,
I tell you their whole story in the guided tour.

You can click on the image to jump directly to each story