Easels should help make the life of the pet portrait artist much easier, by offering a secure support for their canvas, at just the right height and angle. However, there are a number of varieties to choose from, each one designed to meet the particular needs of the artist whether they are in a studio or outdoors.
The most versatile is the sketching easel.
Stretched canvas is a very popular option for pet portrait artists as a support for their paintings. However, there are other supports that can be just as suitable when you don’t have any canvases to hand. Wood has traditionally be used as a support for oils and is one of the earliest forms of support for painting.
With a few painting techniques, similar to those used by many pet portrait artists, detail is an important part of the completed picture. As such, it is important to produce preliminary drawings, but what’s the easiest way to transfer the finished drawing to the canvas? Historically, artists have employed one of three methods to do this, the following explanations describe the principle behind them.
A significant part of any painting, whether a pet portrait or abstract picture, is the relationship in colour and tone. Tone is the degree of light and shade in the picture, it exists independently of colour and can be measured on a scale which progresses from white to black. The perception of colour is created by the eye’s response to light in different wavelengths; pure colour exists only as light, and as far as painters are concerned, all colours are also modified by tonal value.
