A Little ShihTzu for Christmas

The last week of November, I received a request for a pet portrait to be given as a Christmas gift. It's really fun to be a part of a Christmas surprise, but I also feel the anxiety of getting a special gift like that just right and ready on time! My strategy; make a detailed list of every step required and when it needed to be completed. It really helped my inner 'fraidy cat to get all that information on paper and out of my head! Here's the final portrait and the journey of how I got there.

"Sophie" 8"x 8"in., oil on gessobord, ©2017

Meet Sophie, a miniature Imperial ShihTzu and beloved work buddy of her owner. Isn't she cute? Out of the five photos that I received, I thought this one expressed her personality the best and featured a soulful expression in her eyes.

The portrait size requested was an 8x8 inch square. First step, order the best substrate for the job. I went with Ampersand's gessobord, a cradled hardboard on birch wood that has a smooth surface, already primed and ready to paint. When I work this small, I don't like the texture of canvas interfering with the details.

Next, I adjusted the color tones on the photo, then cropped it down to a square and created a grid to guide me in my drawing.

I forgot to take a photo of my first pencil sketch, lol, but here are the acrylic paint sketches made over that drawing on paper. This is where I worked out the color palette and composition problems.

The  acrylic sketches helped me to decide to change the shadow color I started with and crop the image even tighter.

Because I changed the composition, I needed to make another detailed pencil drawing. In this photo, I am transferring it to the gessobord using graphite paper.

 Finally, I get to the joy of actual painting! I begin working back to front so the layers of painted fur will look like they overlap each other. 

The water soluble oil paint I use dries faster than traditional oils, but it stays wet long enough to blend the paint layers with a soft brush and get that nice fur-like texture.

After finishing the painting, I stained the birch wood sides with a wood stain to match the sienna background and let the whole thing dry for several days before spraying it with Kamar varnish. The painting was delivered on December 23rd and best of all, was hearing the happy exclamations and thank you's I received when they saw Sophie's portrait. Definitely made the season bright for me.

Happy creating to all, and to all, success!

>^-^<
Tina

All About Babe

"Babe" 8"x 6" watercolor  ©2014 Tina M Welter

Babe is a beautiful 7 year old Great Pyrenees who belongs to my friend Carol in Kentucky.  Carol is also an artist and when I shared with her my painting of Kirk (click to see Kirk), she asked about a commission for her dog, Babe, whom Carol says is the "best dog she has ever had." 

I started to feel my inner 'Fraidy Cat start getting nervous & fluffing up her fur.  I was fairly confident about painting Kirk because I was able to take the photographs myself, could I paint a good portrait from someone else's photos?  Could we communicate well enough through e-mail if I needed to make adjustments?  What about packing and shipping original art from New Zealand to Kentucky?  How to get paid? Plus, white fur!  When painting white, it means you use a lot of colors to give the illusion of white, it is tricky.

Babe, "the best dog she ever had" © Carol Bowles

Here is the original photo from Carol's phone that she sent me.  This was her favorite photo of Babe.  It was quite small and I wondered if I would be able to work from it. 

What helped me calm my 'Fraidy cat the most was how much I wanted to do this painting.  A strong desire plus dealing with one anxiety at a time.  It feels like such an honor to be asked to paint a beloved pet.  I know it is a painting that will be loved and enjoyed, and that means a lot to me. 

Facing the anxiety:  I could lighten and enlarge the photo using the preview tools on my Mac computer.  Using the larger photo, did sketches to move Babe's favorite toy forward.   Looked up postal shipping rates online. Found Saachi art had a great tutorial on how to pack paintings to ship.  Did palette and small watercolor sketch tests to figure out the colors.  E-mailed a photo of the completed painting to Carol.  Carol wanted a small adjustment to the eyes, and I was able to do that too.  I was a bit anxious waiting the three weeks it took to arrive in Kentucky, but it did make it just fine. Paypal took care of the payment.  Success!

The lesson I am trying to remember when my anxiety fur gets raised is this:

Just because I haven't done it before, doesn't mean it can't be done! 
#creativeanxiety 
(click icon to tweet)


This seems simple, but for some reason I often forget this lesson, even after I have been successful.   I don't know, but I hope writing about and sharing it will help me to lock it in.

Happy fear-less creating.

 >^-^< Tina

P.S. Would you like to read my 'Fraidy cat newsletter from last week, "Getting on the Airplane", which was only sent to my subscribers? Then subscribe to the newsletter on the right and I will e-mail you last weeks news letter...

"Fraidy Cat Gets on the Airplane" 2.5"x 3.5" graphite on paper

Here's an excerpt:
Getting on the Airplane

Now this is something that is probably going to sound so goofy to some people.  Remember,one man's fear is another man's idea of fun. ;0

Many, many years ago, the year 2000 I think, Jeff decided he wanted to take a trip to the Big Island of Hawaii.  Great, I had actually been interested in seeing Hawaii myself, but there was just one problem, I was terrified of getting in a airplane.  Not the flying part so much, I believed all those statistics that said flying was more safe than driving on the freeway in your car.  It was the claustrophobia of getting on the airplane with all those people, the lack of control.  Just the thought of it would send my heart racing.

Jeff being Jeff, he was determined to go.  I could choose to go or not to go as I wished, but he was going.  What was I going to do?....

Meet Kirk...

"Kirk" 7"x 5" watercolor on paper ©2014

Say "hello" to Kirk, he is hoping with intensity for his supper to be ready.  Who could resist that face?  He looks pretty spry and full of energy, but he is 12 years old and having some health troubles.  My friend Evelyn commissioned me to paint Kirk for her brother's birthday.   She knows how much her brother and his wife enjoy Kirk as part of their lives and she wanted to do something special for them.

I was just delighted she felt confident to ask me.  It was fun to go and meet Kirk try to capture something of his personality with my photographs.  The intense work starts when I have to decide how to get that special "something" into a painting.   I do put a lot of pressure on myself to get it right, but it is worth it all when I get to read delighted responses like this...

"Thank you very much for the beautiful painting. Kirky’s eyes are so life-like. And you captured the expression on his face perfectly. This is exactly how he looks when he knows that something is cooking on the stove, but also wants to keep me in sight in case there is something tasty in my hand and he tries to look in both directions.

George says "thank you" too. He is delighted with his birthday present. We’ll get it framed this weekend according to your instructions."   ... that kind of review completely makes my day!

This was my first "pet-portrait" painted in New Zealand, I hope I will be able to do more in the future.  I really like creating something that means so much to other people.

The Fox and The Hound

After such a difficult time painting my first oil painting in twenty years using the red fox as a subject (see my entry "Who Said Oil and Water Don't Mix"), I feel very proud of my latest accomplishment. I decided to do a 6" x 8" painting of a Rottweiler puppy as a birthday gift for a friend of mine. This was a much better experience and I would like to share with you what I learned.

First: Good reference photos. Good reference photos! Good reference photos!!! This means that there is a clear light source so the shadows and light parts of the subject are easy to see. To me, understanding where these light and dark parts really belong make a great painting.

Second: Get the personality of the subject. Get up close so you can really see the expression of the subject.

Third: The photo must be in focus. No guessing about what is going on. I know artists are supposed to use their "imagination" to fill in things, but when I am trying to learn a new subject, it's not a good time to do this.

Fourth: Have a great drawing first. I did a drawing which I transferred to the canvas. Instead of doing a one color underpainting for placement, I could place the darks and lights right where I needed them the first time, which saved me so much time and headache repainting.

The result was a painting that took me half the time, was twice the fun to do and felt very satisfying for me to complete. Lessons learned. Tell me what you think!

Jeff's Corner: Just like a news story, a painting is only as good as its source.