My next commission on the list is the gorgeous Mack. A yellow labrador, head and shoulders pastel portrait.
The reference photo I was sent for Mack was lovely, I decided to change the background slightly. I raised Mack higher so you had the soft, out of focus river and trees in the background rather than the scrub lower down, which was too close to his colouring and not as attractive to look at.
You can see below the original photograph and how I changed it for the pet portrait
You can see my rough edit that I did in photoshop an I think you will agree it looks much better like this.
When it came to sketching out Mack’s portrait I decided to crop even tighter to him. I am not sure if you can make it out from the sketch below, it is a faint outline. I think it will become clearer when I show you some progress shots
I just decided to take out some of Mack’s chest, it wasn’t really bringing anything to the painting and he is such a handsome dog I really wanted to show off his gorgeous face.
I think this photo will show a little better my new crop.
I am really pleased with how is turning out all ready. You will have hear me mention many a time about the ugly stage many of my dog portraits, well pet portraits in general go through, but I don’t feel like Mack has had one of these! In fact I am totally loving the whole of his portrait.
I made more good progress this afternoon and I hope to have him finished tomorrow and scanned in. I have got a little further than this photograph shows, but the light is gone and I am getting a bit tired to fight to get decent photo, so pop back tomorrow and see what you think of his finished painting
Here is the final scan of Mack’s portrait. I am really pleased with how he has turned out. He has to be one of my favourite pet portraits this year. I’d love to hear what you think of him.
