I draw and paint dogs all the time. I often take inspiration from Freija, she’s such a funny looking thing that I find it quite easy to get her characteristics down on paper or canvas. But oddly enough, I’ve never found it quite as simple to paint my older dog, Kara. I’ve given it a go many times before, and occasionally I’ve been fairly happy with the result, but mostly the portrait just looks a bit off. I’ve put it down to using the wrong colours, not putting in enough work with the initial sketch, basically just every reason in the book as to why it wasn’t looking a lot like her. I’m still not completely certain on some of the drawings, studies and painted portraits, whether I was just trying too hard to make it look like my idea of her, or was it down to not being quite there yet in the skill department (I’ll say right now that I’m not a great fan of straight-up realistic portraits, illustrations are more my thing). Whatever the case, I was not happy with most of the results.
Since I found out I was definitely going to be moving to Bath, I had this idea that I wanted a nice portrait of Kara to take with, something pretty to remind me of her and to brighten up the new flat (whatever that’s like – I’m going on a househunting trip to England mid-May, fingers crossed I find something really lovely!). It had to be larger than A4, but not huge so that it would be easy to frame and take along with the move – so it’s A3. It also had to be… well, not TOO colourful, in case it clashes with the décor of the flat – some of the potential ones in Bath have interesting colour schemes, so I was going to have to make it work with basically ANYTHING. So I decided on subtle pale pink on grey, with details in black and just a hint of brighter pink in the eyes and nose – I’ve used a similar palette in purple before with the splatter painting of Freija, but this had to be more “interior design-y”. With the style of the piece, I sort of wanted to hint at realism, especially round the darker detailed areas of the face, and leave the rest airy and light. Watercolour helps with this effect, just using light washes with a fairly large brush does the trick.
So the idea was all set, all I needed to do was find a reference photo, and in looking for that I sort of saw what had been going wrong in my earlier attempts at the grumpy old lady. The photos I loved, where she really looked like herself, weren’t particularly good – there was very little detail, they were often dark and grainy (an iphone camera with bad indoor lighting does not a good photograph make), just plain rubbish. I looked at the ones I’d used before and they were ALL like that. As it turns out, gorgeous though she is in real life, Kara just isn’t particularly photogenic. I eventually found ONE shot I’d taken on my actual camera that had real potential. It was from a hike last summer, and the lighting was really rather lovely, Kara was looking slightly off camera and it just had the feel of a good portrait. It’s the kind of photo I can snap easily of Freija since she’s essentially grown up as a photographer’s dog, she KNOWS to hold a pose and has the patience of a saint. Kara has never been this kind of dog.
Combining ALL of what I’ve talked about above, this is the result! I’m pleased with how it turned out, and will definitely be happy to pop it in a frame to spruce up that Bath flat later this year. :)
Also if you're interested in my painting process, I actually recorded a very sped-up video of the portrait I did after this of Freija-girl. I think I'll record more painting videos from now on, this one was rather fun. :)
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