Sue Linton Artist: 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.