Tully the Brussel Griffon

The Brussels Griffon is a breed of toy dogs, named after the city of their origin: Brussels, Belgium. I loved working from this gorgeous professional photograph which was taken by Tully's owner.  

Tully's face in this photo has so much expression, it just makes me smile!
The painting was created on a large 30x24 wrap around stretched canvas. As with all my acrylic work, I start with a Cadmium red under coat. Next, I used a Hooker's dark green to place the general shapes of my composition in place while keeping it loose and simple.

Then I add white paint on top of the dark green to indicate the highlighted areas. The beauty of acrylic is that it dries so quickly, allowing you to adjust and correct mistakes easily. I continue to add layers of Naples yellow and Portrait pink to indicate light shining through on Tully's adorable face. Working with light and dark shades of green pushing and pulling the foreground and background together leaving specks of the orange/red undercoating peeks through.

This painting was so fun to paint, playing with the paradoxical idea of a tiny image with a large personality! As with all my pet portraits, my hope is that their owners look at my paintings and smile because they see the personally of their pets.  ​