This is Mickey, a brindle and white pitbull terrier dog. His portrait was painted with natural colors on a beige background, which is very different than my usual. Acrylic paints on an 11″x14″ canvas,  finished on May 3, 2022. I love his sweet face! This is a deviation from my normal style, which is typically very colorful and using the whole rainbow. But it is nice to have the challenge of doing natural colors in a realistic style every now and then.

This particular painting was a challenge for multiple reasons. The first is that the reference photo was fairly poor quality. It was shot indoors, so the lighting was very dark, and it was taken from far away, so it was fairly blurry. It is an unfortunate reality of pet portrait artists that many of the photos provided by owners are less than ideal. Most are snapshots, which tend to be taken from far away, at a weird angle, and can be blurry and overexposed or underexposed. Photography is hard, especially when taking a photo of a moving target or in dim indoor lighting. Fortunately my style does not focus in hyper-realistic detail, and instead tends to be a bit more impressionistic, so I am able to use poor quality photos to render a portrait that is a good likeness. Fortunately, the owner was able to provide several other photos that filled in some details like the eye color and markings. This is why I always will ask for multiple photos for any portrait. The owner was very pleased with the portrait, and said it was a good likeness of him, so I am happy with the result!

The second challenge was the brindle fur. Animals that have patterns in their fur like brindle, merle, tick, and tabby, can be very challenging to get right. Again, since I was going for a more impressionistic style rather than photorealism, I was able to give the impression of brindle without the need to paint every single hair. I did an underpainting base layer of brown using burnt umber, and then added several layers of dark brown, black, orange, and light yellow to give the impression of the brindle stripes.

Mickey the Pitbull Terrier Canvas Painting

If you love this painting of Mickey the pitbull terrier, and want a portrait of your own pet, please visit this link to my Pet Portraits Information Page. I can paint any species of animal in a wide variety of styles. I create my pieces with acrylic paints on canvas using photographs as a reference. I have been creating my unique portraits for over 5 years now, and would love the opportunity to create a unique work of art for you of your pet.

Mickey’s portrait is hanging in his owner’s home, but a high quality print reproduction can be purchased of his painting in my Online Print Store. This beautiful artwork of a pitbull terrier can be purchased on many different types of media, including paper giclee prints, canvas, acrylic, metal, and wood. Each print comes in many different sizes, and with multiple options for frame and mat choices. Also choose from other unique products such as greeting cards, throw pillows, tote bags, fleece blankets, tapestries, stickers, ornaments, jigsaw puzzles, and much more!

Acrylic block

This design is also available for purchase in my Redbubble Store. In this store, you can find more unique products, including the wall art and home decor available in my online print store. There is a large selection of apparel for men, women and kids. Unique to this store is the following products: hats, mouse pads, pet mats, pet blankets, laptop sleeves and skins, ipad skins and cases, bath mats, clocks, acrylic blocks, magnets, coasters, comforters, water bottles, and aprons.