Contrary to what the title of this blog suggests, I have not been out this month painting winter willows. Willow is the name of a rather handsome chocolate Labrador, who phoned in recently to say that now he has reached his prime he thought it would be a good time for me to paint his 'best side'. Every other person these days seems to have a Labrador, most of them in the commoner colours of black or yellow. So it makes a change to be asked to paint a chocolate one. Chocolates are more unusual than black or yellow, because chocolate is a recessive colour. Also, the gene pool is small, which can lead to various problems - hence chocolates have a reputation for being a bit daffy. But I have to say, from the word go, Willow proved himself to be a very intelligent and good natured dog, albeit mischievous and over exuberant. I first met Willow as a bouncy young pup, and did several off-the-cuff sketches of him exploring his surroundings and getting into typical puppy scrapes. He knew full well when he’d done wrong, and managed to disarm everyone by combining a guilty expression with a mischievous doggy grin. In fact, he would often trot into a room wearing this combination of faces, eliciting the remark, ‘Willow… what have you done?’ Although he had a perfectly good bed of his own, he always preferred to squeeze into the impossibly small space beside his ‘big brother’, Bramble. Being a pup, he would never settle for long, so I had a very brief window of opportunity to capture this subject before he was up and out again, and looking for some new bit of mischief. As time passed, Willow grew bigger, stronger and bouncier, and much to his owners' concern there was no sign of his settling down. Eventually they resorted to having him neutered, confident that this would help to reign him in. Once he was over the operation, he was quickly back to his former bouncy self, in fact, if anything, he was even bouncier, bounding around blissfully unaware that, in the words of my dear old granny, he’d ‘had his pockets picked’. Now he is in his prime, and has settled into a biddable and well focussed lab, with a lovely disposition. But however well behaved, he still wouldn't pose long enough for me to get his ‘best side’, so as usual I had to resort to photos to augment my sketches - and a comb full of dog hairs to help with the colour notes, because the camera never records colour faithfully. I chose a Fabriano Ingres pastel paper, in a neutral middle tone. The portrait was worked mainly in soft pastel, and the eyes were drawn using a harder pastel pencil, which enabled me to achieve precision in that focussed area. To create and enliven the chocolate colouring, I used a variety of reddish and pinkish earths, with deep purple browns for the shadow areas, and a light purple grey for the reflected highlights: If you have a Labrador, who would like its ‘best side’ recording for posterity, please use the Contact page to enquire. Rest assured, I have all the pastels in all the Labrador colours, whether chocolate, black, yellow or fox red!
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Judith Key
Judith Key is a Norfolk based artist, working in watercolour and pastel. She has exhibited with the Society of Graphic Fine Artists and New English Art Club at the Mall Galleries, London. Her paintings are in collections worldwide. Categories
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May 2018
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