The Creation of: Molly

Paul Ibson, a fine squash player, tennis player and all round good guy, secretively commissioned a portrait of his beloved Molly for his partner, Jayne. I completed this portrait on a 18 x 14 inch cotton canvas. Molly is maturer than she ones was, so the hair is greying and she not as sprightly as she was in her prime, but there is without a doubt a sparkling youthfulness within her that shines palpably thorough her adoring eyes. My initial imperative, therefore, when starting this picture, was to capture those eyes, the stare, which in my opinion has a little Disney about it.

After leaving the earliest incarnation for a couple of days, I returned to it with fresh eyes and started to gently manipulate the shape and proportions of Molly's head as to more accurately represent her. Representation in terms of angle, proportion, size and colour is. of course, the primary importance - but feeling and atmosphere, the ghostly, not-quite-definable qualities of a portrait, are what truly capture the subject and give the initial impact.

After carefully painting the splits in the reflections of Molly's left-eye - then indicating the slight-bulbousness of her right eye with a reflection along it's corneal curvature, I was happy that I had her. Molly's maturity, her love, her shininess and her devotion were all caricatured in the crudeness of my early brushstrokes. I then began the task of trimming and tightening the image. Molly, like all dogs, has a texture. This is embodied predominantly in the hair. To get the correct hair length and texture, I use an appropriate brush (in this case a tiny 0000 brush) and, over days and days, applied the correct texture. When I text a photo of the finished article to Paul, he cried. When he text me again half an hour later, he said that he was still crying and had to tell his partner (whom was the recipient of the "surprise") that he had gotten chilli in his eye. That old chestnut. Safe to say it went down well. What a beautiful dog. 

It's A Roffey