This digital painting demo was created way back in November for a Christmas pet portrait order. In this demo, I show the whole screen including the software palettes and my reference images. I use an older version of Corel Painter (from 2019). My current system is a bit slow for the latest versions. Typical of software these days, there’s a lot of feature bloat in the newer versions anyway. The final size of this portrait …
I don’t know what year it is on the Chinese calendar (let’s ask Chinese hostage John Cena), but for me it’s definitely the Year of the Porcupine. In what is rapidly becoming a fortnightly event, Hudson on Tuesday came home with porcupine quills in his face and mouth. There is a dispute on the count, with The Missus saying it’s the seventh time, and me saying it’s the sixth. What is indisputable is that the …
Last week I conducted a porcupine removal operation because not two days after his encounter last week, Hudson did it again. The first time he came away with 49 quills. This time the count was a bit less, only 40 quills. We knew by the size of the quills that it was a baby porcupine, or at least not fully grown. The vet said these small quills are harder to remove. Easy for her to …
Last night we conducted a Porcupine Quill Removal on Hudson. This is how the battle went…
Portrait of Gracie, an English Springer Spaniel. This was a 2020 Christmas commission.
While he was with us, we had no doubt that Larry was the best dog ever. Time (and several newer dogs) have tempered that sentiment somewhat. It’s not that Larry has gone down in status, he’s simply got more competition. Larry was our first dog. We were married in the fall of 1992. In the spring of 1993 The Missus brought Larry home. At the time I was just starting my home-based design studio and …
Another Christmas commission pet portrait; this time of two lovely Labrador Retrievers, Bella and Maggie
This is Cole, a particularly curly – and happy – fellow. This regular commission came to me in late October, just before the Christmas rush, so I’m including it in my Christmas commissions list anyway because once I finished it, the orders came pouring in. The client only supplied one photo, not normally a good thing. But in this case it was a clear, well-lit photo that I was able to work with. In order …
For this pet portrait commission of Sydney, a charming Black Lab, I used two photos as reference. In one he was dressed for St. Patrick’s day, looking into the camera wearing a green feathery luau thingy around his neck and a goofy headdress with two green Irish top-hats on springs (I’m not judging, we’ve all been there). As charming as it was, the customer requested that the St. Paddy’s gear not be included in the …
Here’s a quick portrait of Hudson. This is from when he was 7 months old (five months ago). Hudson’s color and unique folds in his coat have been giving me fits ever since I started trying to paint him. With this portrait, I think I’m starting to figure out how to handle that distinctive face of his. More practice will help me nail down how to create fold patterns, and better tackle his subtle coloring. …
