The Union Jack Basset

Today I'm gonna share a piece of my artwork with you, the "Union Jack Basset".

"Union Jack Basset", Acrylics on Chipboard 107 x 84 cm, Conny 2013

I stumbled over a large piece of chipboard and thought: "hmmm, perfect size for a Union Jack..."
So I took out my acrylics and taped roughly the shape of the flag with some masking tape. I didn't spend much time on accuracy, the whole flag itself took not more than half an hour, painting and drying included. Here is a picture of the flag:

I liked the result. - Can you see all the little spots where the color came off with the tape again? It adds some grunge and texture to the flag and gives a worn look.  But it looked somehow empty, so I decided, the flag needed a Basset sitting on it...
I found some nice pictures of Bassets on the internet and with my iPad in sight to check the picture from time to time I used some burnt umber to sketch on the rough outlines and shadows of the dog by freehand, using quite a large brush, maybe 1 inch.  Then it looked like this:

As you can see, it's just blotted over the background really quickly and all the nice colors and the damages  of the flag are still there. After that, I started layering some medium tones on the Basset. I used burnt sienna and and burnt ocre, combined with some Paynes (Peynes?) grey, mars black and little touches of titanium white. Finally I put on my titanium white and the darkest spots, again in Paynes grey and mars black. To make it look more like Humboldt, I sticked to a picture of him to match his colors, because how all the spots of colors are displayed over your Basset's "coat" make him unique and when you compare some pictures of different Bassets you will see, they are all different, not two that look alike. So I tried to make him look the most "humbold(t)-ish" as I could. :)
For the fine details, like the little whiskers around his snout and other really small details I used a white and a black watercolor crayon which worked like a charm.
The result is the first picture in this post. I really love  the look of the painting and all the little damages and stains that add some texture and a grunged look to it.
I still have to varnish it, I'm bit afraid of doing so, but I think it coold need some preservation to prevent it from dust and dirt.
At the moment it is still sitting in our living room leaning against the bookshelf like in the second picture showeing only the flag. But I like it so much, that I think, it's gonna be the focus-piece in our future nursury, hopefully, when that miracle will happen to us someday...

That's it for now, hope you like my Union Jack Basset!