Basset in the Sun

 

The Basset in the Sun, 18x24, oil, available

 

The photo reference for this painting was taken a number of years ago. I loved the sienna tone to the whole image. As often happens with my reference photos, is I see something in them when I take them, but then once I get home, it just doesn't speak to me right away. Then when revisiting my photos at a later date, the reawakening of what drew me to take it in the first place comes back. This is an old rescued dame, who once her owner died, no one in the family wanted it. The cousin, who loves all animals, drove a few states away to go pick her up and give her a few good years with the rest of their menagerie. She seemed to have settled in just fine and found this perfect place to sit in the sun. Her name is Clio.

I enjoy doing pet portraits and though this is not a commissioned portrait, I felt compelled to honor this solid basset hound. She seems so regal in her bearing. I started with an old painting as I often do. My intent on this was to record the progress from start to finish and make it into a video. I did all the work to do this but the resulting video is not as good as I would have liked. The program seems to have made all the images darker than they were already. It hasn't been easy to photograph due to the fact I painted over a varnished painting. The glare from the varnish comes through, and painting on varnish also absorbs so much of the paint to make the new layer darker than what is applied. You would think I would learn and remove the varnish before starting a new painting, but I am lazy. So instead, I constantly fight this fact and then it is really hard to photograph on top of it. When will I ever learn??

For the longest time, I wanted to leave some of the sunflowers coming through the dog but ultimately I decided they were just a distraction.