I’ve completed Max’s portrait and just await the final blessing from my client before I ship this beautiful little puppy painting across the Atlantic. I snapped some photos as I was working on him and thought I’d share that progress with you as well, you can see all of the photos behind the fold!

I’ve just completed the under painting on Max, a sweet little golden retriever portrait that I’ve been working on. It’s pretty dark considering the coat is so, so creamy – but the layers of cream fur that I’ll paint on top of this will have a beautiful dimension to them because I’ve started with this lovely golden base coat. The warm shadow tones will carry the patio brick color through to his coat (they appear to be cool, but actually are a combination of magenta, yellow ochre, naples yellow light, raw umber and a touch of indigo.)

Whew that was a mouthful!

I’m looking to finish Max’s portrait on Monday, so stay tuned for that update.

Have a great weekend!!

She’s finished! I completed Gingie’s portrait yesterday – it took a bit longer than I had anticipated because of the size of the piece, the very fine fur detail and the length of time that I can paint fur each day. I spent nearly 3 hours on her ear alone!

It was well worth it though, the completed portrait is absolutely stunning. I am so pleased with how it turned out.

I’ll be sending the proof along to my client and will post the final scan once the painting is dry and varnished.

Enjoy!!

For my birthday, I acquired a new lens for my Nikon D90. This new 70-300mm lens will aid my birdwatching-slash-nature obsessing habits. It arrived the day before my birthday, and as you can imagine, I unpacked that thing faster than a speeding bullet and it didn’t take any time at all for me to throw my boots on and tromp around the backyard taking photos of random stuff.

This particular squirrel is obstinate. She will not be scared off of my feeders or threatened by my pounding on the windows when she’s running my suet feeders empty. Most of the time, she thinks I’m calling her over and will approach me as close as just a foot away. Crazy squirrel.

Anyway, she was sitting on one of my fence posts and with the large maple in the background it made such a pretty picture, for a sometimes very irritating creature, she’s very beautiful. I slid my back patio door open just enough to brace my new massive lens up against the frame to hold it steady, and she posed nicely for me.

Good squirrel.

Enjoy! Painting progress coming soon. :)

I’m one year older.
One year further away from my birth.
One year closer to my death.
One year less afraid of that occurrence.
One year less worried about how people feel about me.
One year more worried about how I feel about myself.
One year closer to attaining my goals.
One year stronger in character and set in my ways.
One more year to look back with very few regrets.

One year closer to driving like a complete lunatic and making everyone else on the road angry.

Funny – all of those things apply this year, too! I feel more and more blessed with each passing year, and though I woke up in a bit of a panic this morning that I’m reaching “old”, I am so grateful for that. I am so glad that I’ve made it another year on this planet, that I’ve had a little bit more time to somehow make a difference to at least a handful of people. I’m grateful for the friends who have stayed with me, I am grateful for the friends I’ve yet to make.

Days like today are special, they are days to wake up and realize that you MATTER. You matter. What you do is significant, even if only to one person. And that’s a big deal.

Have a birthday muffin, on me!! (it’s a couple of years old, but I’ve brushed off the mold. Promise.)

I’ve completed the brick patio background on Max’s portrait today, and I’m quite pleased with how it turned out! The stone is wrapped around to the sides, as well as his tail! The drop shadows are already in place for Max to come alive on canvas. His soft, creamy golden fur will stand out so well against this stone backdrop. I’m really excited to get his under painting going!

This is still quite wet and will be for a few days, so I’ll pick back up on this portrait the beginning of next week.

Stay tuned for more progress on this painting!

If you’d like to inquire about a custom portrait, you can do that through either my contact or quote request forms. You can also shop direct (check out through Paypal) through my shop, I have a variety of single subject custom portrait packages already set up!

I’ve completed the under painting of the background bricks for this adorable little puppy portrait today, and thought you might like to take a peek!

The bricks have a base color of Payne’s gray, indigo and white. I’ll be adding more natural colors tomorrow for the rock detail, as well as including some bits of moss , to really give them a lot of texture and depth.

This painting will take just a bit longer to complete as the indigo has a 2-3 day dry time even using a rapid-dry medium.

Stay tuned … more to come!

I’ve completed the under painting for Gingie’s portrait this afternoon, it’s coming along quite nicely, and I should be finishing this lovely Beagle portrait by the end of the week.

For those artists out there wondering what my palette is, I’m using all of my standard colors plus one or two: yellow ochre, naples yellow light, magenta, burnt umber, raw umber, burnt sienna, sap green, indigo, french ultramarine and white.

I paint ultra-thin, so my first layer consists of darks and shadows that will give me a good base to start layering various shades of fur in additional layers. Her muzzle and chest will be much, much lighter once those layers of fur have been applied.

Happy Monday!

I’ve finished Gingie’s background and wanted to get that up for you to see – the color is a beautiful sap green lightened with naple’s yellow light, so it’s a wonderful, warm green that will compliment her fawn and white colored coat very nicely. It looks a little cooler in this pic only because I’ve got snow blocking my studio skylights, everything has a cool blue tint to it today. (Snow, snow, go away!)

I’ll post another progress of her under painting once it’s ready!