This is a montage drawing of four dogs owned by my client’s sister. They include, from left to right, Daisy the springer spaniel, Kiszy the black poodle, Trigger the long coat Dalmatian and Jack the retriever coonhound dog.
I combined four different photographs of them and used a beach background from Daisy’s photo. I extended this so I could accommodate all four dogs.
They are all very busy as you can see, except Daisy. Kiszy, Trigger and Jack’s photos all had them with something in their jaws and I wanted to capture this to showcase their personalities in the portrait. Trigger the Dalmatian dog sadly passed away only a couple of weeks before the drawing was finished. He is sorely missed by his family and I hope the drawing will bring some good memories for the family on the receiving end.
Here are some close up images of each of the characters, starting with Daisy the springer spaniel:
Next is Kiszy, the black poodle dog. I love the motion in the photo, it brings a certain playfulness to the portrait. His photo was quite dark, so I brightened up some areas to capture his coat in the same light conditions as Daisy. I also adusted the shadow to match the other dogs.
Next up is Trigger, the long coat Dalmatian. He is just gorgeous and very busy! I combined two photographs for his portrait as the better one was a little cropped.
The last, but not least, is Jack the coonhound. He is showing his true retrieving character her with the bone in his jaws :). His photo was excellent and all I had to adjust was the shadow.
I drew in the names of each of the dogs on their tags to make the drawing that bit more personal for the family. The portrait is a birthday present to the client’s sister and her family and it will be gifted to them in early December.
My client, Anne, was not sure how the photos could be joined and originally wanted four different drawings. I thought it might be a good idea to join them all together into a montage type composition since they all live in the one family… Anne was pleased with the idea and decided to order the commission following my suggestion, at 25 x 50 cm in size.
The drawing was quite large with a lot of hairy characters, so it took quite a long time to draw and detail. But the finished portrait turned out quite well and Anne was delighted with it:
Hi Ivana! It’s lovely. I think she’ll love it… I can’t wait to see it in real life…
Anne, on seeing the final scan of the drawing, county Kildare, Ireland
I drew the portrait on Fabriano 50% cotton paper with Staedtler Mars Lumograph Black pencils. I used Faber-Castell Pitt Graphite Matt pencils for the background. I drew a line sketch at first to capture each of the dogs’ likenesses. I then used softer pencils to detail the dogs fur, from 4B to 8B. I took some photographs of the process and the finished drawing before scanning it and emailing to the client for approval. She was very happy and there was no need for amendments.
Why not commission your own dog portrait or make a dog lover in your life very happy by emailing your photos to info@trueimage.ie. I would love to discuss your ideas, even unusual ones. I am always open to a challenge 🙂