The Boys: Ziggy and Rory
24" x 36"
Oil with palette knives on Ampersand Gessobord
Comission
Tim asked me to paint a portrait of his two Great Danes as a gift for his partners's birthday. These large dogs needed a big canvas and it took about 8 painting sessions to complete. I took some progress shots along the way.
Here was my set up. I printed out the reference photo at actual size (on 4 color copies 11" x 17" that I taped together.)
I started with the most important things first-the dogs. I painted a little of green background around them so that I could make sure they would read on the dark green and also to soften the edges of the dogs a little bit.
Then I painted the trees in the background.
Then the flowers, grass, and finally the rocks. The rocks were the hardest thing to paint. They have a lot of colors and textures that I wanted to capture but didn't want them to distract from the dogs.
This painting is still drying but will be ready to ship to the birthday boy in a couple of weeks.