Contratulations!

I thought it might be nice to occasionally include news of some of the dogs I have painted.

Today's news though isn't of a dog I have painted but he belongs to Sue Ellis for whom I painted the portrait above - her Ch Chayo Blue Thunder. Blue is the first Champion Malamute in the UK and of course I am very proud to have painted him and no doubt Sue is equally proud to have bred him and to own him.

The dog in the news today is Sue's Ch Chayo Dom Perignon ShCM who has won an unprecedented two Best In Show awards at general championship shows in the UK and is the first Alaskan Malamute to win a Best in Show at a general championship show. Sue obviously has a knack of breaking records with her dogs! Loius (Dom Perignon) is a son of Blue.

Poppy and Watercolour hints

This is my latest to be listed. I love poppies and this was one growing in my garden. I thought it was too pretty not to paint and so I have - in acrylics! It would be quite interesting to paint it again but in watercolour to see how the different styles look. Maybe I will at some time.

I said I would start to give some tips on watercolour painting, so I will give my first today and that is to buy quality equipment. It's no good buying children's quality paints and expecting anything other than a child's quality painting! You will need to experiment with different makes of paper to see which you like. I generally prefer Saunders Waterford 140lb NOT. NOT stands for Not Hot Pressed believe it or not! The paper comes in different weights and the surface is either rough, hot pressed or Not. Not is a nice middle of the road paper - Goldilocks would have liked it - not too rough and not too smooth but just right - well for my purposes anyway! As for brushes I have tried and tried so many different makes and still have to find the perfect brush. I have recently been using brushes from a company called Rosemary & Co and find the quality very good. I only use sable as I just can't get along with artificial blends - and I have tried because they are a lot cheaper. The artificial blends are just too floppy and lack the spring that sable has. Don't buy too many though as they are expensive - start off with just a couple. Having said that you should only use sable, you can get away with an acrylic blend with a larger brush which you will use to lay in backgrounds but only use sable for the delicate work.

In my next blog I will go into more detail about materials and also a trick to make sticking a wet bit of watercolour paper onto board easy (you need to do this to stretch it but I will explain all next time!)

Anne

info@azpaintings.com

Arctic Fox in Summer

Still on the Arctic theme (it must be the British summer making me feel so cold!) here is the latest painting I've listed. I was fed up with always seeing paintings of Arctic Foxes in their winter coats and thought it would make a nice change to see one in his, still beautiful, summer coat standing in the flowers.

This is an acrylic painting, like the Timber Wolf, and was painted using a layering technique. This is I think pretty self-explanatory and the result is that by making the layers semi-transparent, the painting (hopefully) achieves a nice depth to it. I hope you like it!

Anne

info@azpaintings.com