Man's Best Friend

 

 Dogs, dogs dogs!!
Dog lovers are a special group. The requests to paint dogs are more frequent than any other request. Being a dog lover myself, I enjoy doing them and love the expression of joy when people receive them. The hardest part is doing a dog from someone else's photo if the dog isn't accesible to me.  All of these were done from photos that others sent me. The challenge is to try to express something of their personality when I can only use my experience of various breeds to guess at how that might translate to these furry companions.

                                                                        

 

The Belgian Shepherd

"Rich's buddy"

At the art gallery I sometimes see this beautiful dog. I discovered it belonged to the Winsmith Mill manager. It was my mission to get a photo of the dog and surprise him with a painting. I got it done just in time for Christmas and now he can always have his dog at work with him. He was both surprised and pleased.

A Boy and his dog.

When you are feeling down there is nothing like a dog to comfort you. Seeing the boy feeling blue and his dog faithfully by his side brought up so many emotions. I raised Malamutes at one time and this dog reminded me so much of my Kiska that I had for 16 wonderful years. To put the focus on the relationship between the boy and his dog, I eliminated most of the detail in the scene. I left enough to let the viewer know they were on the couch without making it site specific and to focus on the relationship between the two. I made the red-orange  and blue/green combination a central part of the color scheme to reflect in the fur and on the boy's face to draw you right into the scene. I liked that it was more narrative than portrait. I think the owner agrees.