The Hounds of Finn

The final painting

This new paintings is hopefully going to be used as an image for a friend of mines band called The Hounds of Finn. So in taking on this job I had ot find some Irish wolf hounds and come up with a composition that had two hounds, two hounds that are brothers. These two hounds are inspired from an Irish legend of Sadhbh. This is a wonderful story and here is a link to the story. http://www.irishcultureandcustoms.com/1Kids/StoryofSadhbh.html. These two twin hounds protected a deer who had been bewitched and was really human. The story is a beautiful one and is worth a quick read.

I found a couple of hounds and created a layout and started painting on a 30″ x 30″ canvas. This is larger than I usually work, but I have a show comming up in April and I thought this would  a nice signature piece.

The first photo is the base outline of the painting, again it’s the bones of the painting. Since this is a bit larger I have a few challenges with it. I have been painting in my living room because I no longer have a studio and this 30×30 is just a bit to big to not have an easel. I have to paint this second part upside down to be able to focus on the hounds face and structure. The dogs bones if you will.

With the background I wanted it to look like a continued field that would go back for a couple of miles. The band also wanted the color to be a deep green. I compromised and created paint that varied enough to give depth but trying to stay true to a deep green. In smoothing out the background I had to cover up some of the hounds and will have to go back and flush them out.

This is the base layout for the Hounds of Finn painting.

This is the second sitting of painting on this piece. I worked on the bottom hound I have named "downward dog" right now.

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