I am having so much fun on my current projects I thought I'd share them with you! I have three dog portraits in various stages:
1. Miniature schnauzer, "Buttons"
Buttons' owner loves pansies, specifically the dark burgundy colored ones, so here he is helping her in the garden. The flower beds and background are identifiable as her own front yard. I started this one in pastel and hated it-- too dark and dreary because I was working on dark colored paper. That shouldn't matter, because the pastel will cover all the paper, but it influenced me so much that I was having a hard time brightening up what should be a happy spring-like painting.
So I started over in watercolor, and am working my way through the background and now starting on the dog. I usually do an underpainting in watercolor, and then go back in with colored pencil and acrylic. I am not a purist! Mixed media makes me much happier with the results. Sometimes pastel is too loose for me. I like tighter paintings, though I admire those who get such intricate detail with pastels.
2. Brittany "Louis" hunting
Louis' owner lives in Iowa, and hunts quail and pheasant in the winter, between blizzards! He sent me photos of his parents' cornfields where he hunts, and this fairly loose sketch is what I will paint from. We started with pheasant, but he decided he would prefer bobwhite quail. I had to do some research, since I was only familiar with California quail, which look very different. In the final painting, the quail will be smaller, since they are little birds, only 5 or 6 inches tall.
This scene depicts Louis pointing after flushing out the quail, who have scattered in all directions in hopes of avoiding the shot. The corn rows (after the harvest) are closer together than my diagonal lines. It's little details like this that make a painting authentic. If an artist doesn't get it right, every hunter (and farmer) in the midwest will reject the painting.
3. T-shirt design for the Labrador Retriever Club National Specialty Show
Every year I submit a sketch to the club, and this my entry for this year's shirt design. I have probably done 10 years or more of shirts for them, with only a few years off, like the year I broke my shoulder and couldn't paint! I love that they start the project in the spring, when the actual event isn't until October, so we have plenty of time to get it right.
This project included a hunt through my jewelry box to find one of Grandpa Johnson's bolo ties, a trip to the shoe store to photograph cowboy boots, and several poses of a friend's cowboy hat that I inherited a few years ago, propped atop a canteloupe to get the right angle...
I have hundreds of Lab puppy pictures to work from. People send them to me, and I go out and photograph 7-8 week-old litters for reference material. For a breed club, conformation is everything, and only a show quality, well-bred pup will do. I also follow this rule when doing work for myself. Then it will please pet owners AND show breeders. I have taken paintings of poor examples of a breed to dog shows, where people line up in my booth and critique the DOG, not my work! Lesson learned.
Of course when painting a portrait commission, it is more important to look like the actual dog I am painting than some perfect example of a particular breed. If you can't capture the individual dog, then it is not a true portrait, and will not mean as much to the owner. For example, in the painting of Buttons, above, his ears are natural, not cropped, and one ear perks up more than the other-- an important identifying feature and part of his personality!
I will share these paintings with you as they are finished-- thank you for reading! To see more of my work (finished examples!) visit my website at
http://www.terryalbert.com.
