Watch me paint a dog portrait!

[sigmadog]

Here's a screen-capture video of me painting a portrait of my Bernese Mtn. Dog, Beorn.

Lately, I've gotten into the habit of laying down a bright color as the background and working on top of it. I like doing so because 1) it helps eliminate that big bad white empty space and 2) bits and pieces of that background color will likely remain uncovered in the final image, creating a bit of "sparkle" to the image.

I finally found a good video capture software and - most importantly - adjusted my computer's settings to make the process easier, so I'm doing more videos of my work, which I will post here whenever I can.

enjoy…

[PiP]

WOW!!!! That's amazing!

[Ma'am]

Very cool! Thanks for sharing.

[sigmadog]

Here's another portrait I did a couple weeks ago of three dogs.

[Aquilo]

Wow!!!!!!

[Gentleman Rat]

Wow, you must have been doing that for decades.

[sigmadog]

Wow, you must have been doing that for decades.

One painting? Decades! I'd never make any money.

Ha! Well, I've been drawing and painting since I was a wee lad. I'm no longer very wee, and I've spent the last 35+ years in graphic design and illustration. Now, I'm sliding towards retirement and hoping to tap into the "lucrative" pet portrait market to keep myself busy and my dogs in biscuits.

Thanks for watching!

[sigmadog]

Here's one I was going to post earlier this summer but forgot. This is Boris, our 110 pound Black Lab / Mastiff cross.

Sadly, we had to put Boris down a couple weeks ago due to heart disease. Right now, it's hard to look at my photos and paintings of him and not get choked up.

In time, I'm sure these images will instead make me smile. He was a good dog, and a sweet friend.

The painting took about four hours (I spent a bit of time dithering, changing colors and such in the middle) and it's condensed down to 4 minutes.

[Gumby]

Beautiful! Reminds me of our black lab, Roscoe. We had to put him down last year. It still hurts.

[sigmadog]

Here's a screen capture video of a recent commission. I included some captions to explain the process I went through for this painting.

Software used:

• screen capture: Snagit
• digital painting: Corel Painter
• video editing: Adobe Premiere
• captions: Adobe Illustrator
• music: Apple Logic