Hollis

This time I thought I'd blog a little more about the process of creating a portrait. A lot of unseen work usually happens before the painting even begins! The portrait of Hollis was commissioned by the grandfather of Hollis to be a suprise gift for his wife. He wanted to include the grandson and his daughter's and son's pets. The dog on the left, Gentle, unfortunately passed away the night before the photo shoot, but the family still wished to include him in the portrait. After reviewing old family photos, we selected this image to be the best one to use for Gentle. We chose this one for the eye level perspective and the lack of red/green eye that typically happens when you take a photo of your pet using a flash.

We kept this photo in mind while we were doing the photo shoot to make sure we always left room for the possibility of including Gentle in the portrait.

There usually isn't one flawless photo for me to work from for a portrait, especially when working with toddlers because they move so quickly! At one point we gave Hollis some skittles to cheer him up! The top photo shows him holding a piece of candy and rubbing his tummy in all his happiness! :) This picture created a pleasant look on his face, but of course we didn't want him rubbing his belly in the portrait! The second pose was one Hollis put himself in. While a photographer normally wouldn't intentionally pose a child like this, Hollis' mother said that this is how he sits a lot.  With portraits, I always enjoy something that is unique to the person in the painting and the pose was one of those perfect quarky elements that are unique and specific to Hollis. So it was easy to select this picture for his figure.  

"Hollis"

This is the finished oil portrait. I did a mirror image of Gentle to fit on the other side of Hollis. It was a little tricky adjusting the color tones from the blue tones in the original photo of Gentle so that he would match the coloring of the other dog in the portrait. I also used other reference images to give Gentle a paw which was cut off in the original image. Hope you enjoyed reading about the process of composing this image!