This adorable cutie is Cheeto! His portrait was painted with acrylics on an 8×10 inch canvas in May of 2024. The dog’s coloration was mostly oranges and creamy colors, so I chose a gradient background of cool colors to complement that. The background is a standard gradient of green, teal, blue, purple, and magenta, with a little bit of brushstrokes of adjacent colors to give it some texture, but not too much so that it distracts from the subject. Looking back over my artwork, I have a tendency to use mostly cool colors for the background and there is a reason for that. For one, cool colors tend to be more calming, and make the background less busy. Secondly, cool colors like blues and greens tend to give the appearance of depth and distance, while warmer colors like red, orange and yellow tend to attract your attention and sit near the foreground. So by choosing this color palette, the subject seems to pop and draw your attention.

Cheeto’s coloration was essentially orange-tan with cream and white markings, so I used that as a guide for my color selection. This is a style I call ‘colorful realism’ where I use the pet’s own natural coloration and markings as the basis for my color choices. The result is a portrait that still looks like the pet, but the saturation is at its maximum, giving it a vibrant appearance. This is different to a more psychedelic style, where bright rainbow colors are used without regard for the pet’s own colors or markings. The paints I used for his fur are mostly oranges, yellows, creams, white, red, and hot pink, with some purple and blue for the black areas, like his nose, mouth, and paw pads. The white areas are shaded with tones of purples and blues as well, but in some brighter areas I have incorporated yellows to offset the cooler tones. The inside of the ears are shades of pink and magenta with some darker purple in the shadows. The eyes were left their natural color of light brown, almost a dark amber color. In some photos they looked darker but the reference I used, they were very light.

I love the dynamic pose from the reference photo, and it isn’t often I get to paint such an interesting portrait. In the photo he is sitting up on his haunches, with his front legs in the air, probably begging for a treat. The paws were so cute that I had to include them in the portrait. Most of my portraits just focus on the head and upper body, but this was a nice change and a bit of a challenge to paint the paw pads and incorporate the bit of foreshortening on the paw on the right. A full body portrait would have been even better, but unfortunately the canvas was too small for that.

If you are interested in having your own pet painted in my unique colorful style, please click on the Pet Portraits tab at the top of the screen. I create portraits on canvas in a wide range of sizes, from 5×7 to 24×36 and even square shapes. I can paint any breed or species, including cats, dogs, reptiles, amphibians, rodents, fish, birds or anything else. My portraits are all created fully by hand by me, with traditional techniques and materials. Your pet’s personality and likeness will be captured as a loving memorial on canvas, in a unique style.