In June this year I was busy painting a portrait of Emily with her pet dog Lilly. You can see the connection they share in the image. I wanted to translate this onto canvas for her. Lilly sadly passed away recently after many happy years she shared with her owner Emily. The painting was commissioned by Emily’s fiancee Ciaran as a wedding gift to his bride-to-be.
He had two photographs in mind. In one Emily was looking at the camera, in the second she is hugging her beloved labradoodle. I suggested the second image as it has so much emotion I felt and my client completely agreed. It felt so special to me translating this in paint on canvas.
The portrait is 30 x 40 cm in size. I painted with professional quality acrylic paints on stretched canvas. The canvas surface is fine and it allowed me to add a lot of detail to Lilly’s fur, which is very busy in spots. I kept the background simple ans blurry as in the reference. This brings more focus on the two main characters in the portrait.
Ciaran was delighted when I emailed him a scanned image of the portrait.
Oh that is just beautiful, thank you so much, that’s exactly what I intended, I can’t wait to see it.
Ciaran about the portrait painting of his fiancee Emily hugging her labradoodle dog Lilly, Dublin, June 2025
I started with a simple line sketch as usual. I complete this with a small round brush by Richard Oliver. These are made in Ireland, very affordable and, what is most important to me, of great quality. They are synthetic and work with acrylics very well. I make sure to clean my brushes often to keep them fresh.
Once I was happy with the line sketch and the likeness of both owner and pet dog, I moved on to the background. I wanted to have some basis to compare main colours with. I blocked the painting surface entirely and started detailing the main subjects. I like to work on the entire painting at the same time rather than concentrating on it section by section. This way I use the same colour mixes throughout. I feel it creates a more harmonious painting.
I applied two coats of UV satin varnish to the surface of the finished canvas. Ciaran, my client, collected the painting on the way to his wedding venue in the west of Ireland.