The Artist's Challenge Maintaining Attention of Dogs

The Artist's Challenge Maintaining Attention of Dogs

There is nothing that distinguishes animal portrait painting from human portrait painting except for the fact that animals don't like posing. Capturing the animal's attention the entire time is a challenge for an artist. This is the field in which a female artist of Wilmington has specialized. Her ancestry is traced to the well known Delaware family. Her grandfather, a painter, created sea and landscape paintings which won the approval of the public. By age 3, this female artist started painting as well.

Animals dominated most of the drawings she made. By the time she was 10, she had her own show at the local library, and by the time she was 12 she was a children's book illustrator. She became acquainted with the different kinds of known through the help of famous Philadelphia teachers. For many years she did the solo dance work, doing a very convincing death scene one night in a show when she accidentally took a mouthful of kerosene from a lamp.

Though she paints portraits of different animals, canine portraits are her main interest. She has an interesting way of starting a dog's portrait. She sketches as much as she can while the dog's owner holds the dog still.

The movements of her pencil are a blur as she tries to find the best pose for the model. She talks to the dog and compliments him while she is doing this. To hold the interest of the animal, she employs different props and sometimes even tidbits of food. She asks for the photographs that the owner might have of the dog and seeks permission from him to make copies for her collection. The colors she would use are determined by looking at the colors of the hair which she snips from the tail, ears, and tummy. The snips are kept under the dog's file.

Selecting the pose and the composition with a good background is the next step. The latter is decided based on the animal or type of dog. For a portrait that showed a Chesapeake Bay retriever, she decided to do sketches while seated in a duck blind.

Dogs already have their own views, just like people, she observed. One story that shows how true this was was when an American pointer snuck up behind an artist and then chewed up her painting. It must have been bad or at least bad for him for he had to have quite a large dose of medicine to remedy this expression of disapproval.

For beagle and basset portraits, she blends in with the scenery a dog paw print and also puts the kennel club's identifying symbols on the back. She even made abstract backgrounds, done with the aid of her own dog's paw. Cooperation is not an animal's gift to man in most cases. A model ran off with a female dog, putting a stop to whatever portrait painting was supposed to take place that day. Ordinary as it may be, it just shows that the unusual can take place when an animal's portrait is being made.

POST COMMENT

Dog Allergy Medicine - Do Steroids Do More Harm Than Good In Dog Allergy Treatments? Dog Allergies Treatments - 3 Sure-Fire Ways To Get Rid Of Your Dogs Allergies Treatment for Dog Allergies - 3 Must-Know Reasons Why OPC-3 Is The Best Dog Allergies Medicine Best Birding Binoculars Under $100 - Nikon 7216 Action Binoculars Do You Need Information On The Hummingbird Window Feeders? Massive Birds Of America Dog Training - How To Train Your Dog To Walk Breeding Dogs - Four Facts Your Pregnant Dog Would Certainly Advise You Of If She Could Speak A Guide To Cat Toys Know the Signs of Arthritis in Dogs Bird Feeding Wild Birds - Squirrel Free Bird Feeders Bird Feeding Wild Birds - Wild Bills Bird Feeder Cody Lotts Bird Feeding Wild Birds - Ways To Feed Backyard Birds Review