The Pack
The pack
Over the past 7 weeks, I’ve been working on my independent project The Pack, A series of paintings of my dogs, including my dog who passed away a few years ago. Throughout this project I've learned a lot about myself and my art style. Before this project I felt I had a semi realistic art style, but with each drawing I did, my art style would be slightly different. With this project, I managed to get a realistic look with all 5 of my paintings. I was quite surprised that I was able to keep each painting consistent with the others and it was quite nice to see. When doing my art I would normally look at other artists' work for inspiration, but for this project, I would use pictures of my dogs for inspiration as well as my friend Ally's artwork. It’s not very often that I paint, but with this project I decided to do acrylic on canvas to get the look I wanted. The shading was really nice and it was much easier to blend the colors rather than doing it on paper. My paintings over all were very blended and there wasn’t much detail in the texture of the fur. With that being said, I really love the way this style of painting turned out. While working on this project, I realised that I’m very good at recreating things. With the reference photos I was able to recreate images of my dogs in a very accurate realistic manner and I was very happy with that. I was especially happy with my painting of Luna. It was the first one I painted and I really liked how accurate it looked, as well as the detail on her muzzle and eyes. The only thing I’d really change about it is how dull the colors look. While it looks accurate in comparison to my reference photo, I would still like to brighten the colors a bit. The background does help brighten the colors a bit but I would like to go back and add some brighter touches to it. What surprised me was how quickly I got this piece done. It unfortunately made me feel like I wasn’t doing as well when I was working on the other 4, but it did make me happy knowing that I was able to make a good quality painting in such little time. Overall I’m very happy with how this series of paintings turned out and I’m very glad to have made it. I generally don’t like how my work turns out but these look good enough to hang in the house.
Acrylic on 14x14 Canvas
Misty. June 21 1999. Jack Russell Terrier
Luna. April 22 2016. Bullmastiff Rhodesian and Ridgeback crossbreed. Sister to Malibu.
Malibu. April 22 2016. Bullmastiff and Rhodesian Ridgeback crossbreed. Sister to Luna.
Duke. August 21 2016. Great Dane and Brazilian Mastiff crossbreed.
Zeus. April 11 2012. Jack Russell Terrier.