Pet Portraits by Melanie Phillips ‘Portraits Work in Progress’

Hi Everyone!

I had a minor amendment on the airdale on his whiskers today, but the clients feedback is wonderful, they love it. So I took the opportunity to have a photo taken of me with it so that it gives a better scale to the size. I have also added a similar photo of me with the painting on my oil gallery page of my website.

I have very nearly completed the Labradors painting (reference photo left) and so I will take a photo of it later today for the blog. Its also a large one its a 24 x 18 size so ill hopefully have a picture with me with that one too. I don’t have any work in progress of this one. I think I mentioned on the blog before I went away that I have got about 5 oil paintings on the go at once as they all need to be sent before the last posting date of the 10th of December as they are for the USA. So most of these portraits dont have work in progress, but im more concerend about making sure the portraits are of a high standard and taking my time over them, than blogging stages at this time of year. I then have some pencil portraits and an oil painting for deadlines for the UK and then i can relax for a few days! Nick has lots of pastels to do too, hes as busy as I am and I think hes falling behind on his blog! I will have to nudge him in the right direction me thinks  ; )

The forum competition has now closed and the winners have been announced! Pollyanna Pickering has chosen a first and second prize winner and also two commendations which is wonderful, everyone did such a fantastic job and i only wish i had prizes for everyone. I am so proud of them all! You can see the winners at this link - http://www.pet-portraitartist.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=6891 and you can read the forum members replies and view the larger pictures of the tiger artwork too. So a big thank you to all who entered and also a big thank you to Derwent and Pollyanna Pickering! A good end to 2008! We will definitly have another next year…i just gotta work out what it will be! : )

Here is the final photo of the Airedale portrait. I hope that you all like it! Its fully dry and so all i need to do is sign it and make sure I pack it up well. I have ordered lots of bubblewrap for all the Christmas portraits so the studio is over brimming with bubbles : )

I have been working on a double head portrait of some labs so I will post that tomorrow, you can see the mockup of them left.

Here is a completely up to date stage of the ‘Big portrait’ as I have just taken a photo. I’m coming into the final stretch, im working on the background and have done 90% of the dog, i want to finish the background and then bring out the dog and also add more detail on the grass in front. When the final grass and detail goes on the dog it will pull them forward and hopefully distance the background a little more. I will post another stage probably Wednesday as im out of the studio tomorrow : )

Hi All,

Well im still working on the big painting, I have done a half day today as we had to help with teh cattle back at the farm so its been a busy day. We are sneaking off to get fish and chips for tea yeay!  I have taken a photo of the portrait, i have found the larger sizes portraits are much more difficult to take photos of because of them fisheyeing, so it has distorted the picture a little so ill have to take sure the final photo is exactly straight and zoomed in a little to try to avoid this. Its coming along, I have been working on the body and some of the background and im going to spend the day tomorrow on the head I think. Hopefully it will allow the head to stand off the background as i will deepen the eyes and nose quite a bit. The its on to the sunflowers and flowers down the side.

Off for tea…

Just a quick post today to show everyone a couple more pics of the Airedale portrait! The first picture is the latest stage, you can see i have been working from the top right of the portrait going down the side, and today I have been working on the dog itself.

Hi All!

I am really quite behind as I have never had a facebook account before, i thought last night, right I had better, old friends keep asking if i have one, and i found lots of pet portrait artists on the forum have them so I took the plunge. I have to say I was a little confused at first and have tried to write on my friends Sarah Theophilus’ wall this morning twice but it didn’t seem to work (ill keep trying Sarah!), but I think my page is up and running!

This is the link to my business page http://www.facebook.com/pages/Melanie-Phillips-Pet-Portrait-Artist/47587330896 and it seems I have a normal page too (thanks to Colleen for helping!) so I look forward to hearing from anyone else who’s on there! Drop in and say hi!

I will be adding the next stages to the big painting today so ill be back later!

Hello everyone!

Its been a while since i blogged my portrait and as you can see its well over due as there are plenty of stages to look at and its still only at the beginning!

It has been busy here in the studio. First of all we had family to stay so we had a few days off to be with them which was wonderful. Having said that i did still need to keep up with my emails and we finally (only after two years after talking about it) got ourselves a laptop. Its brilliant, its wireless so that i can sit in the evening in front of the woodburner and warm my toes while emailing…and blogging!

I’m actually up in the studio while typing this as I have been doing mockup after mockup and email after email today. its been crazy busy! I am pretty much now booked for the first two months of next year and have a very exciting painting ordered. You will never guess what it is going to be, and i will keep you guessing as I don’t want to ruin the surprise but im so looking forward to it. Suffice to say its not the usual pet portrait but it does involve a dog!

Well i will end this now as there are going to be so many pics to add ill be here all evening! I will blog the next stage soon!

HI Everyone!

I’m starting to blog the portrait that im currently working on ….and its a BIG one! Its 30×20 and only just fits on my easel. This isn’t the first time I have done a large portrait at this size, but they are usually multiple heads or landscapes with lots of sky. This commission is very different with close up full body dog surrounded by flowers and trees. I have blogged just two stages so far, I have gone a little further, however I want to blog some of the more blocked in stages in a large lump, so you’ll have to wait to see the colourful background stages!

As you can see below this is the drawn in stage and it took pretty much a whole day to draw onto the canvas. I wanted to make sure I had enough detail in there, but of course not too much as I was just going to go over it with paint. So it took about one day to draw it out, and the second day was blocking in the main areas of the dog.

If you are working to a large size like this I really recommend investing in some large brushes and don’t be afraid to put out a good amount of paint on your pallet. You will find as soon as you have mixed a colour it only takes a couple of strokes with the brush on the canvas and you have to mix more.  So for those of you who are worried about colour mixing really don’t panic too much at this stage about the colour itself as it will only be the under coat, as long as its darker you should be fine as we work from dark to light in oils.

I am constantly asked about colour mixing as many of my students find it so difficult to do. I am lucky in that I have never had to really think too hard about how to mix a colour on my pallet, and Nick finds it even easier than I do, so I do find it difficult to understand how and why students find this a challenge. Having said this I am very aware they have difficulty so try my best when teaching and am always on the lookout for tips and techniques to pass onto them to guide them with their colour mixing. So my tip for the undercoat colours on the dog, particularly in this portrait I am working on as an example, is to look mainly at the tones and always keep the colours darker for the first layer so that you can build upon them. The great thing about oils is that they can always been worked over again and again!

I will blog some more stages soon!

Hi All,

Here is the final scan of Mario, who sadly isn’t with us any longer so I am hoping this will be a wonderful reminder to his owner.This depicts Mario in his younger years along with his warm coat and scarf.

Im gradually getting the hang of the new wordpress, I am hoping this time my post publishes along with paragraphs! Fingers crossed.

Nick and I are really busy with our portraits now. Its coming up to Christmas and we are pretty much fully booked and are starting to take gift vouchers. We both have some really lovely portraits to do and Nick has lots of horses both in pastel and oils which he loves. He will be burning the midnight oil I am sure.

My next portrait is a Huuuuuuuuuge portrait in oils and I can assure everyone here it certainly wont be a dull commission to watch progress! I have already started and I will post some pictures as soon as I can!

Final Photo of Portrait in Oils

This is a close up detail of the portrait, both of the dogs are names Norma Jean and Harlow and this is Harlow : )

Detail of the oil portrait

Here we have Norma Jean, she is quite a bit smaller than Harlow which is reflected in the portrait.

Oils Painting On canvas

I think the most bizarre thing about this new wordpress is that the posts look amazing in the preview pane where im actually typing this, the pictures have a lovely border around and the titles are within the border itself, yet when i post everything is all squished up together, no borders around the photos and the titles are out and about. Plus there are no paragraphs whatsoever! I guess these are teething troubles and im sure i will try to work around it as i go, but dont you just hate it when things dont work as they did!