This is the lovely Stanley. Doesn’t he look like an elegant dog? Especially the way he’s sitting with his paws crossed. But how do you paint a grey dog on a grey sofa? With colour of course. :-)

There’s a warmth in his coat and a lovely soft light coming from the side, so I wanted to play with that theme. I started with warm colours for the underpainting and then added soft lilacs and blues for the final layers.

The result is a painting that  glows when the light is warm and sunny. It does make it quite hard to photograph though!

He’s a 16×16 inch painting in acrylics on Cornwall paper, painted using a brush, a knife and paint pens.