His underpainting is complete. The next step for this cute little Scottie painting is the darkest darks and the lightest lights.

A little insight: I don’t see black his coat at all. What may appear to you to be black or gray, isn’t. I don’t use even a tiny amount of black oil paint in any of my pet paintings, and haven’t in years. The most natural darks aren’t really black at all in natural light with natural shadows. I was talking to a friend of mine the other day (who is colorblind, go figure), and had a hard time convincing her that clouds aren’t really white, and snow is blue. Now I’ve put her whole color wheel out of whack.

I learned this from Johannes Vermeer. He never painted with black (aka mars black) at all. I believe this is why my pet portraits are always so vivid and lifelike. There’s very little white, and absolutely no black.

Have a look around you today, and really look at the colors of what you’re seeing. I think you’ll be surprised at what you see.

OooOOOo she’s a ghost car right now, but before long (and after the background dries – which is gray, btw – on an overcast day) you’ll see what color she is. Feel free to make some guesses, just for fun – and for those of you who figured out the make & model – you’re right. It’s a GTO, and I’m not sure what year.

I’m pretty excited about adding a car painting to my gallery, if you can’t tell!

psst…KDiddy – what year is she? And is she a she? She has to be.

I have the background on MacTavish’s portrait painted now (in oils), really warm gold tones are really going to set off his eyes and black coat (and curls!). It’s overcast today, so the true gold and sepia tones didn’t show up well in this photo, but it’s close. I’ve made a slight revision from my sketch, perking his ear back up. I’ll start working in the underpainting once the background is dry.

Ashley’s cat portrait is coming along nicely. One more layer of paint will go on tomorrow to deepen the deeps and lighten the lights – add whiskers and fluff and she’ll be finished.

Here’s another painting sketch ready for oils. This one is going to be a blast, I am such a car fanatic myself – I am looking forward to painting this old hot rod! (Not giving away too much information on this one until I confirm with my client that the coast is clear.)

Two more kitties in the studio ready to paint, Cheeky and Willie. Both from different owners, Cheeky is having a larger painting from the first portrait, so this will be my second painting of him. Willie is a fluffy tuxedo cat, I painted his dog brother Mo back in 2004.

I’ll be sketching one more large painting this morning and then putting paint to canvas on Ashley’s Cat Portrait for the rest of the day.

Mac Tavish passed away this year, this sweet little black Scottie was adored by his mom, and his Aunt decided to present her with a posthumous keepsake oil portrait of him. I always approach these pieces knowing that a flood of emotions will always be attached to the portrait, and spend a lot of time studying the photos to really get a feel of the personality to bring that out while I’m painting. Mac’s photos make him out to be a real sweetie of a dog – one ear always perky, one flopped over.

I’ll be painting him in oils on a nice 12×16 traditionally wrapped canvas, so his portrait can hang on the wall unframed – or she can fancy it up with a standard frame since it’s the perfect depth.

I plan to work on several pieces over the next few weeks, holidays approaching and my schedule is filling up fast. (That’s a good thing, of course!) I’ll be posting works in progress of Mac and a few other paintings going on in the studio.

I told ya she’s a pretty girl.

This is just 4″ x 6″, it will be a sweet portrait for framing. The lighting and eye color are just perfect. I love it when their eyes aren’t washed out in a photo when flash is used, they just turn yellow and have big green/gray pupils. It’s hard to nail down accurate coloring without these natural light photos to work from. This one – perfect. The shades of green and gold are beautiful and I’ll carry that through to the sliver of a background to make her eyes stand out even more.

I’ve been tossing around a Christmas special, too. I could probably squeeze a couple more portraits in between now and gift-giving time – I’ll be tossing that around in my head over the next few days. The best part of being a pet portrait artist is the Holidays, I think. Hearing stories about the surprise and emotional response from the recipients of my paintings really warms my heart. I always feel like they’re my own little presents, those e-mails from my clients just after Christmas.

This custom blog illustration has been tweaked, the line drawing is done, and I’ve colored it in. The blood pressure cuff is just floating there, it will be grounded within the layout of the blog design. I just love this guy! (He’s pending, there may be further and minor revisions.)

I love my job.