Cairo

Meet the love of my life.


I had a break in between commissions and took advantage of it by doing a portrait of my very own dog - something I've always meant to do but never got around to. I put it off for so long because the task of capturing my own dog as I know him in one single portrait seemed a daunting task. My own dear dog, who loathes the camera and as a result appears in all photographs with the most rotten of looks upon his face. This portrait is based on one of a very select few pictures I have of the dog where he has actually temporarily forgotten that I held a camera in my hands. In this particular instance, my other dog walked out from behind me, enticing a smile and a wag from our most displeased subject.

So this is my dog, and I suppose this portrait captures him well enough, perhaps as well as he can be captured. It does not, however, display his goofy legs that are only half as long as they should be (due to the Basset in him I'm sure), which are very much a part of his character. Legs are merely a physical characteristic, though, and as such not nearly as important to a portrait as a dog's soul, which is, without doubt, held entirely in the eyes. In that sense I am satisfied.



I will say this: let it be known that I despise fixative. This picture had a nice bright background that complemented Cairo's eyes nicely...and then I sprayed it with fixative and it all turned pale and gray. And spotty. I tried to fix it as best I could, but it still does not carry the same affect. Oh well. Someday I'll figure out a way around that irritating problem.

Oh, and this is a combination of colored pencil (Cairo) and pastel (background) and the dog himself is a combination of a black lab (face) and a basset hound (body).