29/04: DOGS

I'm posting a series of progress pics here as I have asked my client to check here rather than me emailing photos to his home (trying to avoid spoiling the surprise by having the recipient see the email/photos).

At this stage I'm mostly concerned about the colouring as the dogs' coats look quite different dependent on whether the refs were taken indoors or outdoors, and with the dogs at various ages.  This is always the difficulty when working from photos of course - although even if working 'from life' animals' coat colours can change dramatically from Summer to Winter - as I know from my own much missed horse, Roxy.

Anyway, following the first stages posted a while back, here we go:

I am working from two separate photos

I wasn't sure about the section between the two dogs

so removed some of the 'body' between them to help the right hand dog stand out a little more

and altered the right dog's leg position as it was a bit 'distracting' in this composition - also, in the ref photo the top of the right dog's black body is seen higher up against the dog's ear but have used artistic licence to minimise the area of black - can add more in if required

So at this stage, just waiting to hear if I need to give the right dog more grey hairs or make other adjustments before adding fine detail and tidying up