‘3xWeekly’ Cherie’s Sleeping Labrador

This week as usual, I was falling behind on my 3xWeekly pet portraits. Wanting everything to be perfect is a dangerous thing, especially when you’re learning. Anyway, with a shopping addiction and the constant barrage of e-mail from art supply shops, I bought more System 3 Heavy Body Acrylics. With the paint came a free CD from my current favourite artist Hashim Akib. ‘Lay It On Thick Spread It On Thin’ was the perfect inspiration for this painting of my friend Cherie’s Labrador. I spotted the dog's photo a while ago and thought it would make a nice painting; after watching Hashim paint the goldfish it all came together.

'3xWeekly’ Another PMP Image - Harvey the Boxer Dog

This week I found inspiration from a fabulous boxer dog photo of Harvey on PMP. Traced the dogs image and after painting an orange background, started to fill in his face.  It took three days to look nice but it still wasn't finished. After adding gold to the background and changing the shade of the darker brown it was time to put my paints down.  This is the first time I've really liked my choice of shade and value for a dog with this colouring.  Still not ready to paint Woody again.

‘3xWeekly’ Looking for inspiration

Started painting earlier in the week so hopefully it'll be smooth sailing. Instead of using my own photos I searched for a Westie image on PMP and found a great photo. Made a good start but didn't finish the painting till Wednesday.

For my second and larger painting (A3), my pet Samoyed Princess was perfect, because the dog is white and I was inspired to use methods from 'Vibrant Acrylics'. Rather than draw the dog by hand, I decided to trace the photo to make things go faster... so buying an A3 printer seemed logical :)). Using colours that Asam Ahib used in his tree painting; the portrait of Princess took only 2 days. After the first day I was in love with it; after the second... and some more fiddling, even more so.

For my third portrait I found another reference photo on PMP of a beautiful cat, 'Spooky' ; if you want to follow the link you must join PMP.  This cat proved to be a little difficult, but the end result was unique. The painting could have been more refined, but because it took over 5 days,
 I had to stop working on it. In this photo, the edges were cropped to make the painting look better.  There is a pattern beginning to form here…I can’t even do '3xWeekly' never mind daily. Don’t know why some paintings are easy and others very difficult. Hopefully I will begin to improve and start painting faster.

To get to 100 pet portraits I need more inspiration and many more dog or cat photos. If you would like a non professional painting of your pet, please send me photos. Preferably of the animal looking at the camera... sorry, I know it's hard to get those photos. Don't expect anything too great; they will not be photo realistic because that's not my style. Most will be on A4 paper and some on A3.  You can e-mail me an electronic copy at amsonart@gmail.com... I’ll post my painting on this blog and if you like it and live in the UK, I will mail it to you.

‘3xWeekly’ More of Moose the Dog

Hadn't started painting and it was Wednesday, but at least I knew my subject… more of Moose. After looking at the cat painting by Hashim Akib in the ‘Vibrant Acrylics’ book, I decided to incorporate those colours in a Moose painting. Well to begin with it didn’t look like it was working but after the second day it was much better.

Moose was proving to be a good subject, hence the next painting. This time I started with purple, my sister-in-law's favourite colour. This one came out pretty good as well. Hey this is going good…so far.

For the last painting this week I went back to my old standby…Lenny. I really miss him, he was a truly fantastic friend and companion. The photo was one of my favourites so I wanted to see if I could recreate the same feeling with acrylics on paper. The results were really good…I don’t want to brag but I’m getting much better at this. Let’s hope I can keep it going.