I wouldn’t trade my job for the world. Painting pet portraits is my dream job. But when you have to juggle work between a poorly child and yourself being ill it’s not quite so fun!
I started feeling ill Monday evening, glands are up, sore throat and very tired, my daughter has earache in both ears and the same symptoms as me, so we have been feeling rather sorry for ourselves.
I packed up and posted Milly’s portrait today. If you ever receive a pet portrait from me I am afraid I don’t use fancy packaging for it to be thrown in the bin. I like to recycle as much as I can. Today Milly’s parcel was fashioned out of three amazon boxes my friend gave me. Yes I take in other peoples disguarded packaging too!
I have a spaniel portrait to do next. The gorgeous Harley. I got sent two beautiful references photos to work from and my client was stuck between them. He loved the one with a smiley face, but his ears weren’t forward, and they were in the other photo. I can combine photos to make the perfect pet portrait for you. In this case I used his smiley face and brought the ears forward. I also changed his body shape as I preferred his pose in the ears forward photo. He looks leaner in that one.
Below you can see the reference photos used for his portrait
Reference for Harely’s pet portrait
2nd reference for Harley’s pet portrait
I think you can see what I mean by his body in the first reference photo. It seems awkward some how. Here is Harley all sketched out on the paper ready to go tomorrow. I am pleased with how it turned out and I am really looking forward to starting it.
I thought the background complimented him perfectly, so that will remain the same as the reference photo.
I also had a tidy up in the studio today. Not a complete one, but enough for it to look relatively tidy for the filming I plan to do. I am going to trial my camera behind me this time. If I can get it in the right position the eliminate shadows and so on. The trial run will be with Harley’s portrait in the morning. I shall let you know how I get on then, and if all goes well I can upload a clip. I am quite excited to get started with it, so I hope I feel better tomorrow.
As I mentioned yesterday backgrounds are a personal choice. Harley’s portrait will have a semi scenic background as you can see it is out of focus foliage. One of my favourite backgrounds for recent pet portraits and some wildlife work I have done is bluebells. Who doesn’t love bluebells? You can see they were used in the fox painting Amber in my wildlife gallery
And also I recently did a bluebell background for a cat portrait which can be viewed here
Funnily enough I have been approached to do a labrador in bluebells. It is for Christmas, and I think time will be tight, but since I am a sucker for a gorgeous reference, knowing me I will try to squeeze it in!