Painting progress: Boston terrier!

Hi, I'm gonna share with you my work progress of today.

I was painting a boston terrier for one customer. (technique that I used was pen and tempera paints - not the ones in huge bottles that you can buy in a store for poster painting, these look more like little acrylic tubes, have the same thickness too - which I like. And they are just amazing! I honestly love working with them. Unlike acrylics, that dry out fast, these things are still editable after a while. But of course, not like after a day or so, lol)

So, kind of sharing how I worked, kind of a "how-to" also. 

Yeah.. you can just look at it and decide for yourself :)

So I started with a basic sketch.

After that, I drew an outline with a pen.

Ok, I know this is not the proper way of layering paint, but it works great for me! I start with the darkest - in this case - black. This is how I put down the color base. 

This is what it looks like after putting down the black paint for all the major shadows in the picture. 

Now it's time to water it down, it will make a nice blend. I use a larger flat brush and I only put it in clear water. 

Getting through... :)

....all the spots that need to have it's color. (make sure though you don't paint over the areas where there's light. You need to keep the contrasts visible)

After doing the face, the ears and a little bit of the body, this is what our boston looks like. Getting there but still needs more work :)

Now for the inside-of-ear color - I recommend a blend of white, brown, and dark red. It will give it the right natural look.

Here I put the paint down in a few simple strokes (all these strokes have a thicker layers)

Here the paint was again watered down and it made a nice blend.

Here I just continued adding the basic paint to give the boston its looks. Still the same steps. 

This is what the boston looks now with all the base put down. Starting to look pretty good, but now it's the time to add THE DETAILS!

The eyes - and remember, these details are pretty important! :) they will make the painting look more alive.

The ears - for these details I was using a small brush "0". 

And the nose. This part of the face is also important :)

Since the ears didn't have much of the shape inside, I took a medium brush, dried it out a bit and just tapped on the areas that needed to be lightly darkened. 

"Looking good, sir!"

I used the dry brush again on the rest of the body to get the texture of the boston's hair correctly.
And this is what the finished painting looks like :)

ENJOY!:)