It's Spring and I'm Thinking About Painting Pets

It’s finally spring, and that means we can start thinking about gardening and boating. It also means that Mother’s Day and Father’s Day will be here soon. If your parent is an animal lover, one of the best gifts you can give them is a painting of a beloved pet. I’d be happy to help you with that. I love to paint animals.

To create a pet portrait, I usually start with an under painting in one color, showing the darks and lights, which is my map for the color layer. It's a huge help, and part of the process I teach my students for any painting. Next I begin the color layer with the darkest of the dark paint, in fairly large shapes, and move to the lightest. Then, while the painting is still wet, a top layer of detail, and I'm done. Above and below are some examples of that process.

As you can see from those examples, it really helps to have a good photo of the animal to be painted. And good means two things here. Good lighting is needed to make those darks and lights I’m looking for. If you’re looking into the sun, the animal’s face will be in the shade, which doesn’t work well. In order to get a few shadows, have the sun over your the right or left shoulder.

Getting down to the pet’s level is also very important. When you’re looking down at them, you run into the problem that your eye has a much better lens than your camera. So a dog or cat’s head will look abnormally large compared with their body in the photo compared to your vision. The easiest way to correct this is get down to their level or use a high end camera.

Even if your photo isn’t perfect, like the photo above with the dog and flag, other photos of the same dog can make up for that. At least we’re down at her level and there’s sun on her face!

I’m happy to paint pet portraits any time of the year. If you have a pet in mind, fill out the contact form here, and we can look at your photos and talk about a size, etc.