The Creation of: Mikey

I started work on this after Mikey's owner, Neil, expressed potential interest in a 24" x 18" portrait. After seeing the photographs of this beautiful dog, I did my own study, for my own collection. Now he wants to buy this one! He described Mikey as utterly loyal: "if you put food down, then walked away, he'd follow you and leave the food." I think you can see this is the eyes, the dedicated, searching, alert gaze. I marked out some dimensions with my fingers, smudging in the facial features. I then got a small brush a got the felling, the loyalty, to shine through his eyes - no point in painting the rest of the dog if I can't establish this compelling stare. 

With the important details in place, I started to add deep layers of colour, still with my finger or thumb. I also extended the the image to include his body so that if the head was too big to get the body in properly, I could still adapt the size of the head accordingly without having to redo lots of detail. Luckily, my initial estimate was a suitable size and so after inking in the body, I added some more details to the nose and eyes using a small brush. 

At this point I decided that although I wanted to add some more details and some more colour, I didn't want to relinquish the crudeness that was bestowed upon the painting with the thumb and finger painting. I think it adds a charm. I therefore added a little bit of background as to provide some context and finished with Mikey staring longingly and adoringly off into the distance at, you can only imagine, his owner and, evidently, best friend.