Dog Portraits

Art and pho­tog­ra­phy are my pas­sions. The sub­ject mat­ter needs to chal­lenge me so I change sub­jects and medi­ums prob­a­bly more than I should. I am now work­ing on dog portraits.

I have been explor­ing what medi­ums will work well at sea based on these cri­te­ria: 1. Are the mate­ri­als com­pact enough?

2. How easy is it to store and trans­port the fin­ished product.

So for exam­ple, oils would not be an option for me. Late­ly, I noticed a lot of dog por­traits on the Face­book pen­cil draw­ing group. Since pen­cil draw­ing meets both cri­te­ria, I decid­ed to try draw­ing dog portraits.

Graphite draw­ing is a medi­um I already am com­fort­able using, but the chal­lenge was if I could draw a life-like dog por­trait since I have nev­er drawn one before. When I was a kid, I was obsessed with draw­ing cats so I had an under­stand­ing of how fur should look. Since I have always had dogs, I could draw on back­ground knowl­edge of things like fur directionality.

I just need­ed my first vic­tim. My dear cowork­er pro­vid­ed me her favorite pic­ture of her beloved pooch. And I got to work.

Here is the finished product:

I love tak­ing pic­tures of my work in progress.

Here is a picture toward the start of the project:

And here is a collage of the process:

What do you think?

I decid­ed to chal­lenge myself and so the 7 Dogs in 7 Days Chal­lenge was born. Check out some of my fin­ished prod­ucts as well as the progress pics. 

Con­tact me about a cus­tom dog por­trait for your fur baby. These por­traits are great gifts. Memo­ri­al­ize your best friend.