Painting your dog!

I love painting dogs. I've been doing it for more than thirty years. When you order a painting from me you'll know you're getting the painting from a real dog lover.

First of all, you'll send me some pictures of your dog. If I don't think I can work from them I'll tell you, and you can send more if you can. From there I will scribble away for a while getting the drawing right. Sometimes it's easy to paint a golden retriever, but it doesn't look like your golden retriever. So we need to get it right.

Then, I'll draw the dog up onto the board or paper that the painting will be on and start splashing paint around. I usually paint a sketch in a colour that contrasts with the finished details. This makes the colours of the finished painting "pop" a little, just gives a zing to the painting. Then I'll start the finished layers. At this point I'll probably start sending you pictures of the work so you can tell me that it looks like your dog, as opposed to just a dog. The painting moves on pretty quickly at this point.

When it's finished I'll scan or photograph the piece and send you a copy to "okay" it. At this point I'll put the painting onto my Etsy store and ask you to pay for it, which is very easy and quick. I'll mail it to you either flat or rolled.

I generally don't get involved in framing. Glass gets broken in transit, and that's not good. I'd rather you arrange framing locally, but I do sometimes provide a mount, or matt, on the picture, getting it even more ready for framing.

Sometimes, if I really like the painting, I'll make some adjustments to it digitally and add it to my list of prints. Your painting will never be reproduced as it is as a print, but reversed versions, sometimes with a different background, look very different. If you don't want me to reproduce your painting in print form now is the time to let me know!

Good photographs:

Good photos make good paintings. They certainly don't have to be professional, and taken on your phone is fine. The main thing is to get nice sharp images, and take them from the right angle. Outdoors is good, as the light is usually truer than indoors, but that's not essential. Here's a couple of rights and wrongs from photos of one of my own dogs:

This is a lovely picture of Baxter snuffling along the canal. It fits all I know about him - I can tell he's a Lancashire Heeler, and I can see his black and tan colouring, I can see he loves the outdoors, and the picture tells me all about the time we spend out and about. But I can't see anything I can paint - he's much too small, and he's pointing his backside at me!

This is better - I can see him properly, and he's indulging another of his favourite pastimes - sleeping. His eyes are closed and his face isn't in a good position, so this is no good either.

This is better again - I can see his face at a three quarter angle, but I am looking down on him, and he's looking down at the water, so it's not very egaging. If you think that your painting will go up on the wall at eye level, it's best if the dog is on your own level, and either looking into the middle distance or looking at you in the photograph. This next photo is ideal:

This is perfect. He's gazing nicely into the middle distance, and the angle is taken from slightly below, so it's a bit like when you look up at the painting on the wall.. He's nicely lit, to give definition on his bone structure, and the colours are clear. Here's the painting I did from this photograph: