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I'm a professional award winning Portrait artist from NSW Australia.

Not just a likeness- portraits with Life!
I bring your photos to life in paintings that will touch your heart!

A photo freezes a moment while a painting melts hearts.

Capture a moment in their life and
keep it alive in an Heirloom Portrait !

"Your portraits capture more life than a photo ever could!"
Vanessa.



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https://www.suelinton.com.au/wordpress/




Tuesday, August 5, 2014

Zuzie , Gidget , Baby and Daisy's portrait creation.

Leanne had me create a portrait of  Jimmy for a friend
Jimmy
 30 x 40cms image size
 framed Pastel
 She decided it was time to have her own dogs immortalized. With 4 of them we decided to do them credit and get each face a decent size a large portrait in Oil would be the best option. 

The portrait is a 35 cm x 1260cms Oil on gallery wrap Canvas that can be hung as is without framing. Here is the finished portrait with me to show you the size.


The first step was to obtain photos of the dogs. 
Leanne is a good photographer so she took some candid shots but she wasn't happy with all of them all so I came and took some extra ones.
We selected the favourite photos  and then had to fine tune those down to the ones that would look good together in a portrait.This took a while and much back and forth emailing but it is the most important stage.

Once we had selected them I knew the portrait would be a good one as the photos were flattering and nicely lit and showed each dogs personality well.
Here is the final chosen mockup using the selected photos.This is used for the general design and position I would create a background to suit as I painted the portrait.



Sketches were done of each dog and sent through and approved and then I drew the four of them up onto the canvas I had made. Now to do the acrylic underpainting!
 Although the colours look radical and won't show a lot in the finished portrait they are actually carefully chosen to best enhance the final result.

Early stages - you can see the size of the portrait by the A4 reference photos I have along the top.

The early stages of Zuzie and Gidget.I have a lot of fun at this stage as things don't have to be that accurate although I need to get a likeness of each dog. You can see the tape I used over the top corners. Once I had a finished portrait fall face forward into my wet palette- Argh!!!!!!! I now make sure that won't happen again by using tape as a backup..lol's

 Now I go back and start painting each dog in Oil. Here's the early stages of Baby.I haven't done any final background colours yet. I'll wait till  they are all their final colours and then decide.
 I actually painted each dogs eyes and nose first as they are what really gives them personality and brings the portrait to life . Technically they should be the  final touches thing I do but I like to see how things are going early on and it gets me enthused.

Here Baby is roughly painted in Oil. You can see all their eyes and mouths are done. The paintings can look funny at different stages but I know what will happen and how it all comes together.


Gidget  and Baby roughly painted in Oil.
Early stages of Zuzie.It's funny I thought that as she isn't as colourful as the others I would have more trouble making her stand out but I really had a ball doing her coat!
 It's often the way - the pets I think will be hard to paint are easy and the ones I thought would be a breeze take ages!


Here I have 3 roughly done and am now starting on Daisy - RHS. You can see my Palette where I mix all the paints in the foreground and my brushes RHS.

Starting On Daisy

Bit further along - here I've started on background colours as well.


The finished portrait ( actually I've done a bit of fine tuning to some of them since this was 
 taken.)

Zuzie

Gidget

Baby

Daisy