I took over 400 photos of the farmer and his dogs.
You never get everyone looking good in one photo.
The dogs were constantly moving.
I went through all the photos and picked the most flattering photos of each one.
I had one photo that was a good starting point for the overall look and I photo shopped each one in to come up with a concept. This was then sent away to get the farmers approval.
Once he was happy I did the sketches.
I did an overall sketch plus a separate sketch for each dog and one for the farmer. Once these were approved I started on the portrait!
The reference photo for the farmer.
I ended up moving his arm more to the left to make the portrait more compact. I lowered it a bit and moved the quad throttle more to the left so you could see what it was..
The reference photo for the Jack Russel terrier
The reference photo for the Kelpie x Cauli
The best photo for the Kelpie had her body obscured. I asked the farmer to take some more photos of her from a similar angle. I used one of these to help me create her body in the portrait.