Hi friends! In this post I am showing a Coton de Tulear painting I have done for a friend, who lost her beloved Coton de Tulear of 14 years this month. The dog’s name is Chazz, and he was a gorgeous little boy that I have had the pleasure to meet before. It was the first commission painting I did of a late pet, and since I also have a Coton de Tulear (12 years old), it kind of hit a nerve. For this painting, I decided to use soft pastels, because they capture the soft hair-like fur better than any other medium.
The Sketch of a Coton de Tulear
If you are familiar with a Coton de Tulear, it is mostly a white fur dog with a black nose. I don’t do any details in the sketch. I will show you how I approach a predominantly white dog with pastels in the following steps.
Materials Used:
- Pastelmat (7″x9.5″)
- Sennelier extra soft half pastels (Summer Sky set)
- Conte a Paris pastel pencils
- PanPastel
- Sennelier Latour Fixative
- Paul Rubens watercolour
- Dr. Ph. Martin’s Bleed Proof White
- Rembrandt pastels
Watercolour Underpainting
I painted the black areas of the dog with watercolour first. In addition, I used Bleed Proof White to paint the name on the scarf. This is the first time I have used watercolour as an underpainting on Pastelmat, and I gotta tell you, it was a bit weird! The paint feathered a bit and spread a lot more than I expected, so if you use a watery medium on Pastelmat, beware. In hind sight, I could have used gouache instead, but I was worried about it being thicker and I needed to put in multiple layers with pastels.
Putting in Pastels
Next, I started to paint in the pastels. Since I have a Coton de Tulear myself, I know the anatomy and fur texture and colours well enough to paint them realistically, but I had to refrain from doing a complete copy of the reference photo. I know that around the mouth there is usually a mix of different colours from stains. I tried to capture them without painting in every fur.
Finessing
After that, I blocked in the fur with white pastels and a bit of brown and light yellow. At this point, I also went over the black areas with a black pastel pencil. Moreover, I went over the name with a white pastel pencil.
I moved around to add any colours or shading to the dog before I added in the bottom of the background.
Finally, I added a blue background at the bottom before I sprayed the painting with the Sennelier Latour Fixative for soft pastels. By the way, if you are interested in the review of the fixative, click here.
The Fixative
I lost a bit of pigment after spraying the fixative! Ugh! I added a bit back on the Coton de Tulear painting, but I left the blue background as is.
I used PanPastels to add back some of the details lost. In fact, PanPastels worked very well with the spray and I find that they will withstand fixatives better than other forms of soft pastels.
And here’s the completed painting of Chazz the Coton de Tulear:
By the way, this is my own Coton de Tulear, and her name is Snow White.
If you are interested in a commission painting of your beloved pet, please feel free to contact me. You can check out my commission page for details.
