High-contrast value study of my Dachshund, Bosco.

For this value study of my Dachshund, Bosco, I made a sketch of the contours and shadow areas using the dot-to-dot line drawing technique (which I talk more about in this post). For the reference photo, I opened one of his pictures in Photoshop and adjusted the levels until it was high contrast, then posterized it to just 2 values.

Once sketched, I painted the darkest values with a chromatic black watercolor mix (phthalo blue and transparent pyrrole orange, I think) and Copic opaque white for highlights and whiskers.

This study is a great example of where getting the drawing right was so much more important than the painting technique — I could have used any medium for the dark values and it wouldn’t really matter.

I may go on to paint the portrait in color at some point, but for now I’m really enjoying this monochrome version!