Cavaliers

I spent today drawing and painting a Blenheim Cavalier, but it just didn't do right. At the end of the day I washed all the paint off with turp, which has left me a nice toned background. I finally put my finger on the problem, which is scale.

I was going to do a few drawings to test my theory and start again tomorrow. butended up doing a detailed redrawing on paper, and saw that it worked. I turned the canvas (already dry from its bath) upside down, drew the grid in white chalk and did the new drawing. Then I painted in the negative space with Paynes gray thinned with Liquin.

Two reasons: a Blenheim is mostly white and I wanted the value contrast, and I needed to cover up the traces of the earlier drawing. That blue gray color will do well with the orange gold of the ears, and orange red of the back. The official name of that color in the Cavalier standard is 'liver'.' Not the right word if you ask me.

It's a companion painting to this one, of my Black and Tan Cavalier