Special Commission Painting

Just finished up a special commission painting for a friend. She asked me to create a painting for her friend who's dog just recently passed away, as a birthday gift. The dog who passed away is on the right, with his 'brother' on the left. She wanted them together in this painting, which was no problem. This is about the 5th commission painting from her, for both her family and others as gifts. The first few paintings were in acrylics, until I made the switch to oils. Once I got a taste of oils I never looked back. I love the way oils work and use them for all my work now, including this painting here.

For this particular painting, I kept things a bit more loose than the previous paintings. In my work, even when I was younger, I always aimed for realism in both my drawings and paintings. I can spend much time getting the details right in a painting. And although I did pay attention to details here, I tried to approach it from a more painterly perspective, rather than just a realistic duplicate. For the left and right areas, I had to be a little creative and add elements that were not there, since the reference photo was more square. I almost resorted to using a matte frame inside to match the photo's crop area, but instead I filled it in the best I could using some other references for the blankets.

Overall I'm pretty happy with how it turned out. My hope is that the new owner will be just as happy or happier with it too! :)