3-D Portraiture

This has been an interesting project: painting the image of a dearly loved dog onto a garden statue that the owner said had a very clear likeness of him. The dog, called Shadow, was nearly all black with a white paw and white stripe on his chest. I had lots of excellent photos to work from taken from different angles in order to build up a 3-D reference. So first I painted on two coats of masonry primer. This had the added advantage of allowing me to fill in the pin holes where the cement had set around bubbles. Then I gave him two coats of black acrylic paint before painting in the details of his eyes, paws, muzzle, nose and white fur. I am so used to having to create shadow to create the illusion of 3-D onto a 2-D canvas that working with an object that creates the shadows for you was quite a challenge. The paint effect changes as you move the object around and the light reflections change so I kept adding, then removing and changing the details. Fun to do though and I think the paint has added to bring the unique characteristics of Shadow to the statue.