This is a painting of a young man holding his puppy golden retriever dog. Rufus sadly passed away of leukaemia in February 2022. Him and his owner, my client’s partner, were very close. This portrait was commissioned as a birthday gift in February this year (2025).
I worked at a small intimate size of 20 x 25 cm. I used acrylic paints on fine grain stretched canvas to capture the detail in Rufus’ fur and the detail in the young man’s face. The reference photograph was taken in a dark lit room and did not offer a lot in terms of natural light. It was however very interesting in terms of shadows cast from the nearby light source.
I thouroughly enjoyed capturing this back lit scene on canvas, especially the colour and tone intricacies of the man’s skin.
The client, Grace, was happy when she received the scanned image of the finished painting:
Hi Ivana! The painting is beautiful, thank you so much.
Grace upon seeing a scanned image of the finished painting for her partner’s bithday, , Dublin, February 2025
I took some photographs of the finished portrait before I posted it to the client. Photographs tend to show the grain of the canvas so much better than the scanner. While painting, I focused on creating some interesting shapes on the young man’s face. The shadow cast by the backlighting in the room created some really interesting shapes and tones and I wanted to capture this on canvas. The photograph was quite dark, but warm and this hopefully comes through in the portrait. I introduced some cool tones to balance the portrait too so it does not appear too warm. I find Cerulean Blue to be a great paint for this.
I am accepting portrait commissions, so if you have something in mind, please do not hesitate to get in touch at info@trueimage.ie