Tag: rescue dog

Art Education Slap Down

Wolfy Portrait | 9 x 12” | Oil on Canvas Board


Painting is truly a never ending learning process, which is what makes it so intriguing and rewarding, no matter one’s skill level. However, there are times when you pivot to a new thing – subject matter, tools, medium, etc – and realize the education could be a seamless experience, while there are other times when it’s more of a slap down. This portrait of one of my beloved pups, Wolfy, was indeed of the latter variety. 

I’m pretty sure I had a couple things working against me on this one, but let me know what you think in the comments. First, it’s exponentially more difficult to paint (or draw for that matter) a dog that you know really well; getting the expression just right is nearly impossible. Secondly, the reference photo I used was, well, not the best. Wolfy does not like the paparazzi and therefore a workable pose from the furry prince was hard to come by. The third and final challenge was the recognition that Wolfy’s hair and color patterns were new to me and frankly very difficult to figure out. 

You’ll notice the reference photo has a grid overlay, which helped tremendously and led to a few adjustments that were very helpful in terms of portrait accuracy. However, despite the grid and many hours of work on this piece, I feel like the final result leans cartoonish and for the life of me I can’t figure out why. I think it might be the length and width of the snout is simply off, but it might also be the plane of the forehead… or it’s his eyes. I don’t know. Thoughts? 

Despite the challenges, I had a lot of fun with this composition. And although it was a slap down learning experience, I did educate myself alot about what works and what doesn’t. Some of the “what works” highlights that will carry over into future pieces are the brushwork for long fur, the use of reds in brown haired dogs (it’s there, it’s just hard to see), and the realistic texture of a palette knife for the tongue and nose. 

Thanks for reading!

#artbern #berntx #crashboomzip #painting #art #abplanalp #bernabplanalp #austinartists #atxartist #atxart #atxlife #rescuedogs #bestfriends #dogsofinstagram #dogsofinsta #dogstagram #oilpainting #fineart #petsofinstagram #contemporaryart #fosteringsaveslives #dogsofig #austinpetsalive #mutts #muttsofinstagram #snouts #wetnoses #shephers #hugyourdog

by Categories: dogsTags: , , , , , , Leave a comment

Dangling Paws

Dangling Paws | 18” x 12” | Oil on Canvas Board

This piece is inspired by playtime with Wolfy, who loves fetch despite the challenge of galloping around with his huge paws!

Dangling Paws

There were a few new challenges with this piece, namely capturing the various golden browns of Wolfy’s shepherd-hound coat, as well as the texture of his paws. The key to the coloring was working in various reds and warm yellows, but it took a lot of experimentation to get the right likeness. The paws were more about the texture from using a painting knife instead of a brush, which made the surface of the paws look rough and realistic.

However, the hardest part was the dog bed. I got it in my head that the pattern of the bed would help give the sense of plush comfort that Wolfy’s 85 pounds was enjoying as he slept with his head and paws dangling off the edges. It turned out to be effective, but the next time the bed will have no artistic flair.

Thanks for reading!

by Categories: dogs, RescuedTags: , , , , , , , 1 Comment

Squirrel Watch

Pivoting from painting to drawing last week and finally made the time to finish this one. Squirrel Watch is pretty self explanatory – Wolfgang, my 3 year old rescue mutt, sitting in the yard watching the tree tops for the infiltrators! 

One of my artistic goals this year is to improve my dog related art skills. I’m not a big fan of dog portraits, however, I thoroughly enjoy what I like to call “dogs doing stuff”, creating intrigue through motion and activity. Over the coming months I’ll work on various dog related pieces that capture the essence of dogs being dogs as they do their thing. 

Squirrel Watch | graphite on paper

Squirrel Watch was done over the course of a few weeks – I have no idea how long it took, but I wouldn’t be surprised if I spent 6 hours on this relatively small piece. There were a lot of mistakes along the way, but nothing an eraser and some patience couldn’t remedy. 

This isn’t a piece I would frame and hang, but I’m pleased with it from a progress perspective. It’s also riddled with lessons learned, so if you zoom in to see the details you can spot various styles and techniques.

  • Reference Photo
  • Squirrel Watch progress
  • Squirrel Watch progress
  • Squirrel Watch progress
  • Squirrel Watch Final
  • Squirrel Watch Final and Supplies

Here’s what I learned and need to remember for future drawings:

  • It’s not necessary to draw hair detail throughout the subject. In this piece, the emphasis should have been on shading and shape foremost, whereas hair detail should be secondary. 
  • Draw hair details with a clear understanding of actual direction of the hair on the dog.
  • Work hair dark to light. 
  • Most of the hair detail can be accomplished using 2B, HB, and H pencils.
  • Show wrinkles in the coat by changing the density of hairs, i.e. closer together or further apart.
  • Dog paws are hard to draw, dammit! 
  • Blades of grass can be done by either individual strokes or by lifting out shading with a thin eraser. 
by Categories: dogs, DrawingsTags: , , , , , , Leave a comment

Yellow Ball with Tails

Yellow Ball with Tails
Oil on canvas board, 6″x8″
Sometimes you just know a composition is going to work, virtually able to paint itself. Yellow Ball with Tailswas exactly that kind of composition. Wolfgang and Zip loved this toy because the 2 tails made it tug-a-licious! As the designated thrower, I liked it because the ball made it easy to throw without getting dog slime all over my fingers.  Ultimately, this toy stayed inside and lasted about 20 play sessions before parts started to get ripped off and chewed up.
I’ve recently made some adjustments to my still life setup, changing the platform so it’s higher and is at sitting eye level. This gives a new angle that’s easier for me to translate to the canvas.
This piece moved quickly and was done in a couple of sessions this week. As I stated earlier, this composition looked great from the start and I knew it was going to be a fun project when I saw all that bright yellow shredding dangling against that blue background. Definitely going to spend more time on compositional arrangement with future dog toy paintings.
The canvas board was ideal for this type of toy because it has a lot of toothy texture, which easily lends itself to the toy’s material. The only thing I don’t like about a canvas board for this type of piece is the fine detail of the threads. The canvas texture makes it very hard to paint a thin line, so I often had to do some back and forth with the darker background color to get the thread lines just right, basically painting back into the yellow thread line to reduce the width.
There’s a lot of yellow in this piece, and I did some experimentation:
  • Deep Yellow + Titanium White as the base for the mid-range yellows. Added Ultramarine Blue and Cadmium Red Light in small doses for the shadows on the ball. 
  • Cadmium Lemon + Titanium White for the lighter areas. 
  • Indian Yellow, which I don’t typically use often, here and there to vary the lighting along some of the longer sections of the tails. 

The blue cloth was Ultramarine Blue and TW with variations of green made from Cad Yellow Deep and Cad Red Light. 

 
Originally, I had included the tag on the toy, but once the piece was 90% done the tag looked too distracting and didn’t add a lot of value, so I took it out. 
 
For those interested in the toy itself, it came from BarkBox, a monthly dog toy subscription service. Our dogs destroy toys, much to my artistic delight, so BarkBox has had to adjust what they send us to try and find toys that are good for tugging but also very durable.  Supervised play is the best solution for our fur balls because once they’re done tugging, it turns into keep away, which devolves into a game of “I’m going to eat this so you can’t have it”. Somewhere between keep away and vindictive chewing is when I like to step in and save the toy. If I was going to rate this toy, it would go something like this (1-10 scale):
  • Tugability 8 – withstood some strong tug sessions between my large dogs (Zip 50 lbs, Wolfy 85 lbs )
  • Durability 6 – hard for a canvas toy to rate higher than a 7, so this is pretty good
  • Versatility 8 – this could have easily been used inside or outside, both for fetch or tug. 
  • OVERALL 7

Yellow Ball with Tails - Dogs
Zip and Wolfgang – Dog Artists

Yellow Tail Ball - ref photo
Reference photo – Yellow Ball with Tails

Yellow Tail Ball block in
Block in of dog toy

Yellow Tail Ball 1
Started with the yellows

Yellow Tail Ball 2
First paint draft done

Yellow Tail Ball 3
Working details

Yellow Tail Ball 4
Fine details of shredded threads

Yellow Tail Ball Final
Finished Yellow Ball with Tails dog toy

by Categories: Series - Dog Toys, still lifeTags: , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

Zip’s Flowers

Zip’s Flowers: 20″x16″, oil on canvass

Sometimes art is very cathartic, but at times it can be maddening. However, I’ve learned over the years to rethink the frustration and consider those pull-my-hair-out-of-my-head moments as learning experiences, and more often than not it works. When I just can’t get a piece to work, either compositionally or from a technical skills perspective, if I focus on what I need to learn to fix it rather than become irritated at my shortcomings, I tend to get back that Zen painting zone.

Zip’s Flowers has been a long learning experience! Wars have taken less time to finish. That said, it’s chock full of newly acquired knowledge, of which I’m very excited about. There’s also some personal interest in terms of the background of this photo. This flower shop is a few blocks down the street from where I lived one summer in San Francisco. We lived in a great neighborhood along the border of the Mission and Castro districts, on 18th between Hartford and Noe. This flower shop, now called Urban Flowers, was along the way to the dog park. My wife would take the dogs at least once a day to the dog park. One day, the 1 year old puppy, Zip, decided smelling the flowers was no longer satisfying, so she opted to taste them. As the story goes, she reached out and grabbed a dangling flower from one of the pots and proceeded to knock the whole thing over! I wasn’t there, but my wife said the people at the shop were very friendly and weren’t concerned about Zip’s flower chomping. Of course I had to see this for myself, and a few days later I was walking Zip past this flower shop and sure enough, she tried to gobble down a basket of roses as we walked by.

The composition itself was probably the hardest hurdle to overcome, which I took license to adjust reality to make things work. The reference photo shows a wide variation of building colors and construction materials, so some adjustments had to be made on various fronts to make it look less contrived – ironically, the reality in the photo was too hard to believe in a painting. The values also had to be exaggerated to give depth and a sense of place, whereas the photo was very flat. Finally, the amount of tissue papered flowers was overwhelming and a bit distracting, so that was scaled back significantly.

My favorite part of this painting is the right foreground. First, the flowers in white paper came out much better than I had anticipated and they really frame that side of the painting. I also like the realism they add to the scene. Secondly, I’m very happy with the tall yellow sunflowers going up the stairs. These two elements combine to draw the viewer into the painting (hopefully) and consider wandering through the rest of the composition.

The sheer multitude of color is initially distracting for me, but once I stepped away from it for a day and returned to the completed piece, the colors were more welcoming and a source of excitement.

Do you like this piece? I’m guessing people either love it or hate it, given the colors and somewhat busy nature of the scene. Suggestions and observations are welcome.

Reference photo – Urban Flowers
Flower shop sketch
So many flowers!
Getting close
ZIP’S FLOWERS || 20″ x 16″ Oil on Canvass || $100

by Categories: Landscapes, Urban LandscapesTags: , , , , , , , , 4 Comments

Ball! Ball! Ball!

Oil on canvass panel, 6″x4″
My dogs are a big part of my life, which means I live to serve their needs, in large part because I love them and, well, they don’t have thumbs. My oldest dog, Zip, is a 7 year old Aussie Catahoula rescue mutt from Austin Pets Alive!. Her world revolves around two things – food and “ball”. To that end, I serve as her chef and throwing machine.
The lifespan of a Zip tennis ball is a couple weeks. She chews on them while bringing the ball back for another throw, as if they’ve offended her and need to be destroyed. It’s the epitome of a love hate relationship.
This piece is a tennis ball after 1 throwing session. The fuzz and color have been adequately altered, making what had been a boring, new green smooth tennis ball into something with depth and intrigue. Thank you Zip!
I like to do these small dog toy pieces on a canvass board to help with texture. In this piece, it was very helpful with the need to pull out strands of tennis ball fuzz because the rough surface helped scatter the stringy look in a random pattern, thus making it look more natural. The hardest part was getting the dirt just right, which took some experimentation with Burnt Sienna, Raw Umber, and various puddles of orange.
Finally, I was pleasantly surprised how effective the white line of the tennis ball added realism. It was also important to put a small hint of shadow along the edge of the white line to give just enough depth on the surface of all that green fuzz.
Tennis Ball - Oil Panel 2
by Categories: Rescued, still lifeTags: , , , , , , , , , , 5 Comments