With colour I hear you ask. Aren’t all your pet portraits in colour?
Yes most of them are, but this week really has been all about colour. When I say colour it wouldn’t be the colour you think of for my usual pet paintings! When I open the photo gallery in my phone it is a like a whole rainbow of colour. I have taken a screen shot to show you. It puts a big smile on my face!
A lot of you have seen my Jolly Splashes work, there was a fairly big canvas painted of Sam the lab in this style. I have painted Sam’s portrait in pastels before and you can read about him here
Sadly Sam crossed the rainbow bridge a little while ago, so I truly hope his Jolly Splashes painting brings them some comfort in the years to come. This was the first painting full of colour.
Acrylic Pet Portraits
Now these are really colourful. As mentioned in a previous blog 2020 is going to be all about pushing myself as an artist, trying new mediums and styles, so part of this was to bring acrylics to my life again. Many years ago all my pet portraits were in acrylics and applied in a method like watercolour, lots of washes and layers with details. As the years have gone I have wanted to introduce more colour and vibrancy to my pet portraits. It started with Jolly Splashes, but as time has gone on I really wanted to try acrylics in a looser more contemporary style. At the end of last year I took the plunge and bought a load of acrylic paint. Mainly as most of my old tubes had dried up and became unusable. That’s OK as shopping for art materials is like shopping for shoes or clothes. I love it!
Initially I painted a cow and you can read about my experiments in this blog
Four Dog Portraits
A repeat client of mine saw these paintings in this style and approached me about painting her four dogs. She has 3 poodles that I have painted in pastels and a gorgeous doberman called Ruby. Ruby was painted sitting amongst bluebells and was fantastic fun to paint.
Her request was four small canvasses measuring 8×8 inches with different coloured backgrounds and each dog to be painted in vibrant colours, but reflect their natural coat colour. To tie them all together I decided on one colour to appear in all four portraits. I chose teal. It seems to work so nicely with all colours I can’t help but reach for it in all these paintings!
Here is Ruby the dobermans portrait. I have been creative with her colours, but I think you will agree they are reflective of her natural coat colouring. I added some purples and pinks to it to increase the vibrancy and you can see my teal addition too which I mentioned ties the portraits all together.
Below is the reference image I used to paint her portrait.
I was delighted how I managed to keep a likeness to Ruby whilst painting in a much loser style to my usual detail portraits. I am really enjoying getting to play with colour also. I’d really recommend the Jacksons acrylics for anyone either just starting out or even the more established artist who needs a lot acrylic at a reasonable price. Jackson’s Studio Acrylic Paint