This cute painting features a colorful portrait of a brindle and white English bulldog named Gertie! Her portrait was painted with acrylic paints on an 8×10 inch canvas, and was completed on October 25, 2024. She is laying in a grassy field and has her favorite tennis ball toy with her!

Gertie’s portrait was a challenge. The person who commissioned her was not the owner; the portrait was a gift. She had a selection of photographs of Gertie for me to choose from, and many of them were lovely snapshots but not really suitable for making a portrait. However, I was able to composite three separate photos of her in order to create an original portrait. I used the head from one photograph, and the body of another, and the ball was taken from a third photo. This is something that I feel comfortable doing when there is not one single photo that is a perfect reference. I have extensive knowledge on dog and cat anatomy and proportions and can piece together a good quality reference that looks natural and realistic, which creates a one-of-a-kind portrait rather than just copying a photo.

The person commissioning the painting requested bold, bright colors, and wanted the background to be blue and green. The solid cool colors were a good choice to contrast with the mostly warm colors of her fur, and the midtones contrast nicely with the bright whites. She is brindle and white, and for the brindle areas, I used orange as my base, and layered yellow, hot pink, purple, blue, and even a bit of teal for the markings. The white areas used the white of the canvas as a base, and I added layers of blues and purples for the shadowed areas. She has a very wrinkly face, so it was important to get those areas as accurate as possible so her personality would shine through. Her eyes were painted with their natural dark brown color. The tongue and ears are bright pink, and so are her little toenails. The tennis ball is a vibrant fluorescent lime green, which is the actual color of the ball, so it was already colorful to begin with.

Since this was a gift, I have no idea what the actual owner’s reaction was to being given this portrait, but as far as I know, they liked it. The person commissioning the portrait loved it, and said that it looked exactly like Gertie and showed her sweet, gentle nature. That is the best result I could hope for.