I painted this lovely English springer spaniel dog a few months ago for his family. Goose sadly passed away last year and his owners miss him terribly. He looks so happy in his local park, in his element as the owner says. Goose was part of the family for a long time and they wanted to have a painted image of him to display in their home.
My client, Stephen, contacted me with a very specific idea and photograph he wanted to transform into a portrait. I had one image to work from for the painting. I asked Stephen for another more detailed photo of Goose and his colouring as I was removing his body harness from the original reference image. I suggested to remove this in the painting and wanted to see what his fur colouring looks like underneath.
My clients wanted an A3 sized painting at 40 x 30 cm. I painted the portrait with professional grade acrylic paints on fine grain stretched canvas. I use Winsor Newton artist acrylics for most of my paints with some Old Holland paints too. For the support, I use Belle Arti canvases made of fine grain cotton canvas.
Because the photographs were not really detailed, I worked in a looser way than usual. I used larger round brushes and reflected some background colour in the dog’s fur. For the background, I used flat brushes. I find they have great coverage. I don’t usually work the background in too much detail to offset this against the more detailed main subject of the give portrait.
Stephen and his family were very happy with the finished painting and expressed this in his email to me after seeing the scanned image of the canvas and once they received the painting in the post:
Hi Ivana! Thanks you so much for the email. We are absolutely made up with the painting. It looks incredible. We can’t thank you enough…We received our painting and it’s absolutely amazing, we’re made up with it thanks so so much.
Stephen about his commissioned painting of his pet springer spaniel dog Goose, Dublin, May 2025
I posted the painting to my clients unframed. It is ready to hang on the wall like this, or can be framed at a later stage by the client. The stretched canvas is on a wooden support and works quite well I feel unframed or framed.
Commission your own pet portrait as a gift or a keepsake by simply contacting me at info@trueimage.ie with your requirements and photographs. I am looking forward to seeing what other projects I will get the privilage to work on in the future. Currently on the easel, I have a lovely family portrait painting from photos taken during their trip in Carvoeiro in the Algarve, Portugal, so keep an eye out on my social media and website here…