Work in progress

I have been working on a commission for the past 3 weeks.It has been an interesting project to say the least.
When you start these things you have to try and get onto the same wave-length as the person who asks you to paint a picture for them.

Its much harder than you would imagine, a calm sky with a full moon can take many forms as can a mirror- like sea--both of which I was asked for.
Then comes the hard part--a jetty with with his 3 dogs on, one a wolf dog howling at the moon and the other 2 dogs, a jack russell and a labrador, incorporated into the painting too !!!

. Well I did the jetty but wasnt happy with it, I emailed the customer with each stage as I did it and adjusted it to suit his wishes and he agreed, the jetty didnt look quite right, so I scraped it off and put in a beach instead with some gentle ripples instead.

Now the part I was dreading--the dogs. Now I was sent some snaps via email to give me some idea of what the dogs looked like--handsome they are, but difficult to paint!.

I have been working on some drawings the past few days, to get them in propotion to the painting, have come up with a rough idea of how I want them to look, I sketched them out roughly onto black paper, cut them out and blue-tacked to painting to see how they looked , waiting for response off customer, then I can get the paint out and finish the picture.
It has been an exciting project, I dont normaly paint animals of any sort so I put pressure on my self with this commission, but I feel you have to branch out and try different things or its too easy to become stuck in a rut!