A pet portrait painting of a shepherd dog (not sure of the breed or the name, this was a gift). Painted with acrylics on 9×12 inch cold press watercolor paper, completed on May 24, 2025. I believe this dog is a Belgian Malinois, due to the lack of a saddle on her back. Although her features look more like a German Shepherd, so it is possible she is a mix between the two. Her portrait was painted from a single reference photo, but I had a few others of her to use as secondary references to help fill in some details and answer questions about her markings and coloration that was not clear in the main reference.
This dog’s portrait was painted in natural colors in a realistic style. The reference photo featured warm golden afternoon or early evening lighting. She was lit from the side and the shadows were long, typical of golden hour lighting. I chose to replicate this in the painting, keeping the shading on the left side of her face (right side of the painting), and the rick golden hues. The background I painted a rich warm brown, and kept it simple rather than including all the grassy details in the reference photo. It is a mixture of several different colors, and I made the area above the head a little darker to add depth.
The colors I used the most in this painting are raw sienna, raw umber, burnt umber, ivory black, unbleached titanium, bronze yellow, yellow oxide, and neutral gray. Some gray and ivory were mixed into the shaded areas, to not only darken it but to change the color to a cooler hue, since shadows tend to be cooler when the light source is warm. The lighting in the photo was a bit washed out, but I made my colors a bit more saturated and intense to give it depth and warmth. In the photo, her mouth was open and her right leg was sticking out, so I changed that in my painting because leaving it like that looked odd to me.
This painting was a challenge for me, for multiple reasons. The first is that I was painting on watercolor paper, instead of canvas. Watercolor paper is ‘thirsty’, meaning it absorbs water very readily and that means the paint dries very quickly. This makes it very hard to blend and mix colors on the paper directly. The paint drying quickly also means I had to work on many very thin layers, since if I applied the paint too thick it would make the paper buckle.
The second challenge was the golden hour lighting. I love dynamic lighting, and this was a pleasure to replicate. I had to be cognizant of the hues and color temperatures of the various parts of the dog, and also needed to replicate that subsurface scattering of the light by making the boundary between the highlight and shadow more saturated. There is reflected light in the shaded areas of the fur, too. Overall, I am pleased with how this turned out.
