Going to the Dogs

Here are some doggy friends who've posed for me, or I should say for my camera. It is easier to get a dog photo as many are trained to stay still for a time, but mostly I like to catch a candid pose even so. I just like the surprise shot that has an unplanned expression or quality. I take a bunch and usually one or two turn out. I love my digital camera A Sony 717, that has a lot of flexibility and a really great lens. Please feel free to share this post with anyone who is considering how their fur friend can become the subject of my art work...Since I work from photos I'm not limited geographically, or even subject to time. I've done several memorial artworks.


Chuki is the Princess. If left alone or left out, she screams, not howl not bark, screams! The first time I heard it I thought she was in mortal danger and ran faster than I've moved for several years to help. She is totally precious! In this small 8"x10" head study she has her summer hair cut.



Boomer lives in Marin. I think of him as a Steve Martin type "wild and crazy guy". He like all Australian Shepherds is very high energy, always ready to play. This 11x14 pastel painting is a sample of a head and shoulders and garden background.

Bugs is one of my earliest portraits, this is a pastel drawing. It's really challenging to do black animals...one has to invent new ways of seeing and really look at the highlights, even overdo them, and wonder of wonders if the artist really sees, the highlights are colors.

So to do this drawing I put all kinds of very bright strong colors down first then began to work the darks over them...have to be very careful not to fill up the "tooth" of the paper before you get to the darks, otherwise there's not room to put down the top layer. I don't do drawings anymore, I love to really layer on thick color to create depth, so I use boards specially coated with marble dust called Pastelbord ( by Ampersand) that hold a lot of color and let me do lots of layering and manipulating of the surface with water and other things.
The difference between a pastel drawing and pastel painting has to do with how much of the surface is covered. It's a drawing when most of the original surface is left showing, and a painting when the whole surface is covered.