Sleeping Buddies II Commission

I received a request from a customer on Etsy from Germany.  She saw my little Sleeping Buddies aceo on google, which was already sold, and wondered if I coulde paint her a bigger one but with a brown bear, light brown mouse and green background.  I was delighted to and quickly replied to her request.

She decided on a 5x7 and so I quickly sketched him out on a piece of paper and then quickly colored him in a bit with colored pencils to get a feel for it. 

Because of the texture on the canvas, I usually like to draw my painting on a piece of paper and then trace it onto the canvas by scribbling on the back of the paper with pencil and then tracing it.  I've tried tracing paper but that leaves smudges all over the place. 

I started by putting in some of the shadows on the bear, and then working from there.

I then painted the little mouse, making sure you could clearly see the mouse among all that brown.

Got a little carried away with the background before I remembered to take a picture.  This little guy begged for purple flowers with all that green.

I find that I get better results if I walk away from the painting every now and then to get a fresh look when I come back.  I pretty much finished him after a couple of hours.

The next day I did a little tweeking and painted the sides.

Here he is on my desk drying next to another painting I am working on.  Actually when I finished painting the sides of Sleeping Buddies II, I decided to paint the sides on the cat painting, still haven't named it, so it can dry and I can finish with the last bit of details.

Here's Sleeping Buddies II.  The picture is bad because the paint is still wet and I took it in my studio instead of outside, which is what I'll do once it dries before I ship it off to Germany. 
Here's a link to the original Sleeping Buddies in my shop .

I hope you enjoyed going through the process with me, it was a lot of fun for me to share. 
Have a wonderful day!

Hugs,
Brenda