3 Tips For Creating Expressive Pet Portraits
So you want to paint a pet portrait? And someone has sent you a few images of their dog, cat, bird, or rabbit. You're not sure what to do because there isn't enough detail, or the image is blurry, or it has a terrible background. Well...here are a few tips for making your pet portrait the best you've ever done and WOWing your client.
Animals have expressions like humans.
You'll notice in the picture above it appears the dog is smiling. I tend to round the sides of the mouth slightly and angle the pets head to create an illusion that the dog is looking up at the owner. This creates a friendly feeling in the portrait and an intimate experience. Owners want to remember this special connection they had with their pet. Often I am commissioned to create a pet portrait for a newly diseased pet. I always hope to produce a portrait that reminds them of the affection they had for each other. The artist can recreate this feeling by slightly departing from the original image. It's the little things that show the most!
Make it 3 dimensional with tonal values
When the background on a piece is a yucky brown...no one is interested in seeing it. The art doesn't feel alive. There are certain colors that just don't WOW most people. This is where color theory comes in handy. If you pick the right tonal value you can create interest in the piece. Below is an example of how you can pair a complementary color to the subject of the painting. I decided below to pair the bright blue with the oranges and reds. The cool colors make the background fall back, and the warm colors pushed the subject forward.
Optimize your background with bright colors & texture
My pet portraits all have bright colors because I like to add visual interest to the subjects. The animals seem to pop against a brighter background color. This may not be your illustration style, but I highly recommend considering your background tonal value in relation to the subject. Often, I see pet portraits where the subject falls against the background of whatever was in the original picture. Other paintings have subjects against really dark backgrounds. Separating the subject is what creates the piece as an original. The artist decides what to eliminate. Sometimes there are helpful elements in a great photo, but often the person taking the photo loves the ANIMAL and not the background. It was a random fast moment where their dog posed in a way they LOVED. I consider this when I go to paint the dog, cat, or bird. This makes the end product (which I hate to call it a product) something more visually interesting.
Using flat colors helps the viewer to focus just on the subject and makes it look like pop art. For some clients this can be kind of a fun style to explore. Other clients might want a pet portrait that has some tonal variance. You can experiment with mixing in different tonal values into the background.
And now to recap:
- Give the animal an expression
- Add tonal value to backgrounds
- Utilize bright color and textures
Hope this was helpful to you and you enjoyed my post! Please leave a comment for feedback below if you would like to see more about my process. You can also follow my project on Youtube.
