untamedartists

Pet Portraits can be a rewarding and challenging area for animal artists. There are many ways to do them, and you can google pet portrait and find over 1million sites world wide. Some artists specialize in exact copies of a photograph, the better the photo the better the result, with every hair in place. Although I love these and sometimes do this, as an artist I want to reach beyond copying a likeness and find more. In this thread I will explain how I do that and show you step by step how a portrait can become a work of art as well as a likeness.

The first thing I do is visit my client if at all possible and take my own photos, look at the house, and style of living, and most of all make contact with the animal. I spend anywhere from 2-4 hours, sometimes returning for more time if I'm unhappy or incomplete on the firt go round. I talk to the client and ask them to tell me stories of the animal. If the animal has pass on this can be really important.

After observing the animal or in this case animals, and the home and meeting the people, and really getting to know them all ( one of the perks for sure of pet portraits!) I sit and sketch some things if possible or at least make notes especially of colors as the camera often does not help you get this right. I go home right away and download all the photos and color correct them in Photoshop, while my mind is fresh, since I take a lot of photos, this may take 2-3 hours, while I sift, adjusts and crop.

Then I let things set for a while, and let ideas come and go in my mind's eye. When one or two ideas keep coming up I start to form concepts of what I'd like to express. Every animal has a lot of sides to them, it's best to find one and stick to it for the work, some main theme you want to work on. Next I do small pencil sketches for composition , these are just abstract shapes of light and dark, when I get something that clicks I try it out in quick 1 -2 hours oil or pastel studies.
So here are the steps in summary
•meet and greet
•photoshoots
•collate the photos with color adjustments and crops and lables
•sit and think and imagine
•settle on a theme or idea you want to express
•work out thumbnail compositions, if the composition is off the whole
work will be weak no matter how good you get the likeness
•paint some studies

Now at last I'm ready to present to the client my ideas, and explain how much it will cost and get their agreement on what we are going to do. If they want changes I make them if I can, or explain why it is done the way I did it. Sometimes what they want will not make a good work, and this is the time to talk that over. I don't insist on my way, but if it is going to hurt the outcome, I work with them to get a compromise. Mostly when I explain, there is no change needed. Take time at this point to get on the same page, and you have clear sailing ahead, with fewer bumps. They also become aware of all you are doing to make their painting and this helps them feel comfortable with the prices you charge. I've never had a client reject a study, but if it happened I'd come up with a new one, better here at this point than redoing a huge completed work.

After all this I'm ready to begin, I have two lovely clients who rescued two wonderful and very personalble cats named Violet and Sydney. Both cats came at different times, Sydney is the younger, and it was love at first sight, so they are wonderful together and my clients hoped for one painting of both of them. Unfortunatley unless you are a studio photograher this is really tricky, and I like candid shots, so what I did was take several photos and paste them up in photoshop. If you do this you have a big job in the painting to correct perspective, and light, so this is not usually a way you can just copy a likeness. If you can take one photo that works as it will be much easier to do and take less time. On our girls I will just have to work harder to get it. I painted two studies, both of which were pasted together Photoshopped compositions.
I'll end this post and show you in the next one all the images.

Here are the two photoshopped paste ups, I'm not a trained PS person so I just fool around with tools and get something to work from
Violet
Sydney
paste up of them on the rug
paste up of them on the stairs
I had two ideas, both cats on the stairs, a more posed painting and both on a rug I liked, with lots of pattern, I really wanted to do the rug, but never got both cats on it at the same time in the same light and perspective. They were never on the stairs either both at once so again photos had to be combined. I had a third idea, but discarded it after the photoshop paste, as too mundane. I have adventuresome clients and I wanted to use the freedom of that.

and here are the 1hour oil studies 8x10, I only look for composition here not likeness, and trying out some colors that will get changed, but it's a starting point. I have to change Violet's position so she doesn't overcome Sydney in front who is smaller, I will have to work out a rug pattern later, probably with less blue in it and will rethink how the tabbies and pattern can work in harmony. The studies are sent to the client at this point and after approval I start. The clients liked the rug poses and so did I. Next step will be to work out the larger 16x20" compositon and we decided on an oil painting for this instead of pastel, the only other media I do portraits in. When the compositon is on the board, I'll post that next. [/img]

Hey Colleen, I saw you finished work you did from this elsewhere and it was brilliant. What was the client's reaction?