painting one. a dog. 4 X 6 acrylic on paper

painting one. a dog © Studio-Middle

I can’t do a painting a day, but I’m going to try for 2 a week (mainly on weekends), and this is my first. Learning and sharing.

This reminds me a little of the Blue Dog paintings by George Rodrigue – but that wasn’t my inspiration. I didn’t have any black paint, so I used brown and blue to get the darks.  The dog doesn’t really look like my dog, but the painting is inspired by her.  For example, my dog is black with white chest and white tips to her feet.  She also has highlights of red in the sun, which is why I took the red to the edges here.

I think the color hues aren’t re-presented as nicely here as they are in real life – the green is a little less yellow, and the red more red than orange.  I’ll have to work better on the lighting when I take these shots (I think the flash on my camera washed the colors out a little).  I’ll paste in another image, which isn’t as clear, but is probably a better represetnation of the colors, at the bottom of this post.

My dog also has mis-matched ears, like this one.  She’s struggled with allergies, which have affected the drainage in her ears all her life.  I adopted her when she was 5, and I had to bring her in for a partial ear canal removal on her right ear. Years later (last December), she had a complete ear canal removal on her left ear.  That means she has only 1/2 an ear left on her. Poor girl.  We’re working really hard to keep that last 1/2 working! So, as a result of the complete ear canal and cartilage removal from her left ear, it pretty much just droops.  Her right ear stays perked up, however, straining to hear what she can with what’s left. Don’t feel sorry for her though – she’s totally spoiled and pretty much thinks she’s a princess.

another view

My dog is also getting old-o, as we say it around here, and white whiskers are popping up to frost her dark coat, mainly around the snout, which is why I dusted my little dog here in this painting.