Faithful friend, fearless guardian
Behind my friends' home, there was a small farm. A chicken coop, a horse in the field, a few goats wandering through, and four joyful daughters coming and going in the midst of it all. Watching over every one of them was Bear, a Maremma Sheepdog the size of a small bear himself. Hence the name.
You really cannot appreciate just how big this dog is until you stand next to him. He warded off coyotes at night, kept the chickens safe, played with the goats like they were his own siblings, and looked after those four girls as if it were his sworn duty. Bear lived outside in his element, content in his place at the heart of that family.
Bear, 12x12” pastel
When I went to photograph Bear for a painting, I found him right at home, out among the animals he loved. The portrait above came directly from that afternoon at the farm.
This painting of Bear highlights something I want to share with you this week. The most important thing to capture wasn't his coat, or even his likeness exactly. It was his spirit. That watchful, playful, gentle, enormous spirit. And spirit, it turns out, is exactly what the painterly approach aims to reveal.
There is a freedom that lives inside loose, expressive painting. The marks suggest more than they describe. Color carries feeling. The eyes, big contour shapes and a few telling edges do the heavy work of likeness, so the rest of the painting can breathe.
A handful of accurate shapes and well placed darks will carry more recognition than hours of carefully rendered fur. Fresh color brings a pet to life in a way that gray toned realism rarely reaches. And the love and familiarity you already have for your subject will find its way onto the surface, if you give yourself permission to stay loose.
Blue & Gold Macaw, 15x10” pastel
This approach works across species, too. The same painterly thinking that brought Bear to life carries a brilliant blue and gold macaw painted on a dark surface, pulling vibrant feathers out of the shadows with bold direct strokes of soft pastel. These animals come from different worlds, yet carry the same painterly heartbeat.
If you'd like to explore this kind of painting for yourself, I'd love to invite you into my Painterly Pet mini-course. It is a focused journey through evaluating your reference, designing your portrait, and painting two different pets in two distinct ways. You'll work through the painterly approach with a dog painted on a light surface (yes, Bear is the demo), and then take a walk on the wild side with an exotic macaw portrait on a dark toned surface.
May this week bring you joy at the easel, an adoring smile from your pet of choice, and maybe even a furry friend to paint along the way.
If there’s a pet curled up nearby as you read this, take a moment to really see them. That is where the painting begins. And since The Painterly Pet is self-paced, you can begin whenever inspiration strikes.
Keep painting,
Alain
