Realistic Pet Portrait

I was asked to work with another library branch at work and create a "Pop Pet" Portrait class where people would bring in pictures of their pets and we would rock the Andy Warhol style of bright colors and large images. I had never done one of those before but said "sure, why not!". I decided to practice a bit ahead of time with my childhood dog Ginger aka Pinge, Ginge Pinge, Pinger, etc. you get the picture. You can see the results in my previous post here. 

At the end of last year, I was asked to teach a class for The Little Birdie Wine Nest in Parma to help people "realistically" paint their pets. Again, I had never done that before, although I had a little experience with the "pop" style, but "realistic" would be a little bit different. Again, I decided to practice ahead of time! I watched a variety of YouTube videos on what other artists do and adapted to those techniques. Below I will walk you through those steps! 

So this here is the majestic and royal Simba. He is small but mighty in personality, just look at that mane! He deserved a pet portrait to show off his strength up close with power, am I right?!

​All I need to get started with these pet portraits is a photo. Preferably a good photo. I'm talking nice and clear, close up, and a good angle. This one was perfect! 

Yes, I can choose to just sketch this out freehand but... I have found the best way to get his basic shape down first and that is with a projector! I save the picture to a flash drive, plug it in to my projector, and project it onto a canvas in order to sketch out the animal. That way, all the features are the right size and shape and located where they're supposed to be! Because.. you know.. that's kind of important. 

I do want to address here something essential to painting a pet. So when we talk about our animals we might say "I have a black dog... a white cat.." but do you really? If you really study your animal's fur, you will see that your black dog has some copper brown hair in some spots, or your white cat has some grey undertones. Pay attention to these areas because they will come into play while painting your pet! We work from darkest to lightest colors and then go back and forth to create more detail towards the end. 

So, as most of the tutorials I watched, I start with black paint! No matter what color the animal is, I always start with black. I honestly think this terrifies people, but trust me! Black is used to address all the "dark" areas of the animal. If your animal is mostly black then, yes, you are going to end up covering a lot of the canvas in black but NOT all of it! But, we'll get to that in a bit. 

Now that we've addressed those dark areas, I choose my next darkest shade. With Simba, I went with a dark charcoal grey. As you start to add these layers, you can start painting in the direction of the fur too. This could be wavy, curly, straight, short, long, "whispy", etc. When I use the next darkest color, I slightly go over the black areas with this color to start overlapping and filling in more surface area. 

Following this same pattern, I then choose my next lightest shade which in Simba's case was a lighter grey color. Again, I work in the direction of his fur and overlap the previous color. Adding these various layers represents the variety of colors, shades, and shadows in your pets make up. 

Keep in mind, that every pet is different, so in turn, painting every pet is different too. You will most likely never use the exact same colors as the person next to you painting a different animal and your animal may have 6 different colors verses just 3! With Simba, I felt like I had used the main colors I wanted, but he looked blocky and unnatural. So I went back in with some black paint again to thin up those blocks of color and begin to make it look more like hair.

​After the basic colors are done, I kind of start hopping all over the place! I worked a bit on Simba's mighty chest which is all white but using a bit of black, then grey, then white. Next, I focused on his snout which is a bit tricky! The key here is just to make sure they don't end up looking like pigs! Which seems to happen a lot :)

At some point, I address the eyes. I never do this at the beginning and always wait until closer to the end. The animal always comes alive once you take care of the eyes! So take a look at your animal's eyes, what colors are in there? It's probably not much but using that color to slightly add into the eyes, brown in this instance, does wonders! Paint in the pupil with black. And the final touch is highlight with white. Use the white to lightly mark where light is shining on the pupil and where there might be some lighter hair around the eyes as well. 

To finish Simba up, I went around with a bit more black again and then finally with white to highlight his crazy fur! I used it to address his "whispy" (I use this scientific term in all my classes too) pieces of hair, his whiskers, and his ear hair too of course. I like to add a little white to the noses too so it highlights the "wet" nose look. 

Oh, lastly, you can choose to paint your background before or after you paint your animal but I find it best to do it at the beginning and get it out of the way!

I hope this helps break down the steps of painting your own pet realistically! It takes a little bit of getting used to at first but you will get the hang of it, practice practice practice, right?! If you try this out share it below so I can see what you create!