Finally finished this mini epic of “Snow Dog” (on a 40″ × 50″ stretched canvas) which took me about 4-6 hours over a couple of days. Before I could even begin to attempte painting on this huge canvas realised very quickly I would need to build myself a larger easel just for this project, which was fun in itself. 

 

Photographer Grant Glendinning kindly gave me permission to use one of his photographs as the reference for this painting.

This is the very large easel I ended up making from wood I saved from an old childrens pine bed, The metal legs, I cannibalised from the tripod of an old astronomy telescope.

I firsted sketched the snow dog out on the canvas with a 2B pencil and outlined my sketch with a black permanent pen before giving the whole canvas a couple of coats of Gesso. I then painted straight on top using acrylic paints and a variety of different brushes, hog hair, riggers and fans.