The creation of a Carole’s second triple dog portrait from separate photos.
The second portrait – Liz , Liz and Emma
I kept a similar background with Liz , Liz and Emma so this portrait would look good hung with the previous Rex , Hawk & Grizzly portrait.
Once again Carole found all the photo’s she could of each dog and emailed them to me with a note as to which were her favourites.
As the portrait was a multiple dog portrait as well as trying to pick the most flattering and sharpest photos we had to choose ones that would look nice next to each other and suit the design.
Here are the photos we selected.
Emma
A photo I took.
Now this one is more like it!
A nice happy pose , sharp with good eyes and nose details .
I used another photo we had that showed Liz and Emma together to help customise Liz’s markings and show the difference between them both.
Liz
Memorial portrait
This photo was really bad. There is no detail in the area between the eyes and her eye shape etc isn’t clear. For the best results in a portrait I need to be able to see the bone structure, eye shape ,and the way the hair sits as each dog is different and that is what helps make them unique!
See a closeup of the reference photo
See how you can’t see the shape of her right eye or nose properly?
Liz ( German Shepherd)
Memorial portrait
This was the most flattering photo we had of Liz. Once again it was a cropped section of a photo taken from a fair distance away.
The detail in the nose and eyes wasn’t very good. Carole said to just go ahead and do the best I could.
Here is a mockup showing suggested placement of each dog in the portrait.
I sent this to Carole to give her a rough idea of what the finished portrait would be like and get her feedback. We decided this was the way to go and then I did a sketch of each dog and sent them for her approval.
Again I did 3 separate sketches as then they could be bigger to get more detail in.If I had done one long one the faces would have been smaller.
If necessary changes can be made to the sketches at this stage but Carole was happy with them so I could then start to paint!
The sketches are shown below.
Liz , Liz & Emma
35 x 74 cms
Oil on gallery wrap canvas
‘You’ve done it again. It’s awesome!
I’m sending it off for my friends to see. ‘
Carole