Dogs

Today I had a little commission to paint. Last time S.T.A.R.T. (which stands for Shelter Transport Animal Rescue Team) had a fundraiser, I offered to auction off a pet portrait for a donation. Someone won the item and then asked, if he paid extra would I do both of his dogs? I told him yes, and planned to get back to him with a higher price tag. He sent me reference photos, and I realized that the higher price tag was warranted; not only were the photos not great quality (and had things like half a head chopped off), but the only picture of the dogs together was with one of them lying prone on his stomach on the kitchen floor, and I wasn't going to paint a full-length dog!

I ended up picking out the two photos in which the dogs were both facing forward and looking at the owner (camera), then cutting out the dogs, scaling them so they were approximately the right size in proportion to one another (I say approximately because I only had that one photo of the two of them to go on), and pasting them into Photoshop next to each other to create a composite photo from which I could work. I'm hoping that the person doesn't mind that Bailey's tongue is hanging fully out of his mouth...but if he does, he should have sent more photos! (Plus, I love painting dog tongue, the colors are cool.)

Such is the lot of dog portrait painters. (And sometimes of human ones, too, although I haven't yet painted a picture of anyone with their tongue hanging out.)

I ended up waiting so long to get this portrait done that I decided I couldn't charge him any more for it, but at least the charity received their donation, no matter what. Here is my watercolor of Bailey and Samson. I hope their "daddy" likes it.

"Bailey Samson"—watercolors and a little gel pen on coldpress watercolor paper, 12x9 inches (with border for framing).