This portrait is of a cute black tricolor Australian shepherd dog named Caliber. Her portrait was painted with acrylics on a 20″ x 20″ stretched canvas in late October 2022. Her portrait has a natural color scheme on a vibrant rainbow confetti background with a diagonal gradient. The reference photo featured her laying on the couch smiling at her mom. This is a unique portrait, and I really like the dynamic posture that the dog is in. Most of my portraits feature the pet usually sitting down, and either looking directly at the camera or just slightly off to one side. This position is more interesting and evokes more emotion than a typical portrait. It is nice to do something different every now and then!
Like so many of my pet portraits, the reference photo for this painting was a composite from several sources. The main photo reference featured the majority of what you see here, with the exception of the ears and some of the chest markings. While the main photo was very cute, her ears were pinned down to the sides of her head, and I thought it would look better if her ears were more forward. The customer found another photo of her in a similar position with her ears up, and thought maybe that would make a better reference. However her expression in the photo looked more startled, so I decided to take the ears from the second photo and add them to the first. And the customer liked that better so that was what we ended up going with. The customer stated that Caliber loved to smile a lot, and that was a feature she wanted in her portrait.
This year a majority of my portraits have featured a natural color scheme for the pet. This is a deviation from my typical style, which is using bright colors on both the pets and the backgrounds. A couple of years ago, my most frequent customer requested that I paint some of her portraits with more natural colors with colorful backgrounds, and I thought it was a nice change. After doing a few of these I decided to add it to my choices for customers in the hopes that maybe it would encourage more sales of portraits. Maybe not all customers want bright rainbow colors but like my style anyway. In 2020 I did two portraits like this, and again in 2021. But this year for some reason about half of the customers wanted that style, so I think it was a good decision to add the style choice.
If you like this portrait of Caliber and want one of your own pet, than please visit my Pet Portraits Page for more information on the process and for a price list. I can do any size from 5×7 to 30×40 on canvas, and also have added 3 inch ceramic ornaments as an additional option. I have two styles (colorful and natural) with many choices for backgrounds. I can do a painting of any kind of pet, including but not limited to dogs, cats, birds, reptiles, farm animals, rodents, and even wildlife. Please contact me for more information.
This original painting is hanging in her owner’s house, along with the others in her pack. However, it is available for purchase in my Print Store as wall art and home decor. You can choose from 7 different options for wall art, with optional framing, in many sizes. It is also available as blankets, pillows, totes, and other assorted merch.