How To 'See' The Blackest Of Dogs

In a perfect world we’d get perfect photos to paint, but sadly we very often don’t. We get photos that are too light or too dark, too fuzzy and poor quality!

With black dogs, often the coat can be so black that we can’t see any fur texture and just painting lack where we see black often just doesn’t make a good painting. This is especially true if the photos have been taken inside but you can also have issues on dull grey days too like in this photo.

Here is a simple way to see through the black. Increase the brightness until you can see into the dark areas and get the fur direction. You can also play around with the contrast setting and if you have it, the highlights and shadows setting. My phone, as standard has these settings or you can use an App like PicsArt

Now that I can see the fur direction I can add black pastel in that direction. Then I can choose the level of darkness that I want but I still have the correct fur direction and texture. I can add highlights in pale blue or grey or lilac depending on the lighting. 
This approach leads to a more realistic effect.

You can lighten any photo to be able to see the fur direction better, it's not limited to black dogs, but it works especially well for black dogs 👍

TOP TIP: Fur direction and fur length are the 2 most important things to get right and practicing specific skills in isolation are the best way to improve.

The Soft Pastel Skills Hub is a great place to practice this kind of skill. There are lots of short tutorials to choose from, some examples I've shown below. The Hub allows you the time to do the practice and not worry about 'finishing a masterpiece' it takes the stress out of the practice so you can concentrate on improving the things you want to improve rather than having to start a big portrait from scratch each time.

Learn more about joining the Hub here