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During the Renaissance, important people spent huge sums on having portraits of themselves and their nearest and dearest painted by the great artists of the age. Today, the tradition continues but with an irreverent twist; now we’re much more likely to paint a dog in a ruff than an Italian nobleman.
These custom pet paintings are a fun way to show your love for your furry friend and fit great in any home with a sense of humor that loves dogs. All that’s required is a reference photo or two and a little thought on how you want the final piece to look.
We’ve been painting our pets for almost as long as we’ve been painting. The first step towards joining in with this tradition and creating your perfect pet portrait is finding good reference photos to work from. Getting this right means that you’ll get a much better final result. You’ll want to choose one that really shows off their personality and has their face as the focus, so take a little time to go through your camera roll.
The next step is picking out the perfect historical style for your dog painting. You’ve got a lot of options here, as we’ve got 72 to choose from. Let your imagination run wild.
Is your darling doggy a pampered princess? Go for a regal look. Are they the terror of the postman? Why not show them as a noble warrior?
The choice of costume gives you a chance to really customize the final dog painting and say something about their personality. You could even go for a group picture and feature the family in your dog painting.
Once you’ve picked your reference photo and decided on the outfit you want to dress your furry friend in, it’s time to start painting. You’ll need to position your reference photo so that its head sits naturally on the body you’ve chosen and then create a transparent layer over it to work on.
Following these steps should allow you to get to grips with painting dog faces.
The first step of painting a dog in acrylics is picking the right tools. You’ll want fine liners or a rigger brush for digitally painting in individual hairs. For softer areas, a fan brush is great for creating blends between colors. For base layers or general texture, opt for rounded tips.
Now it’s time to start painting. The first thing you’ll need to do is create a solid baselayer and block in the shape of your dog’s head. It’s best to go for the midtone of their fur for this rather than the color on any lighter patches or shadows, giving you a chance to shade down and highlight up as the painting starts to take shape.
Your pet’s fur is layered, so your painting has to be too. Once the basic color is blocked in, you can start bringing it to life with some shadows. Working dark-to-light helps keep things looking natural and so does starting off with softer, blended areas. Finally, sharper, distinct details can be added last.
Fur (or hair in general) is never all the same length, even when your dog is freshly home from the groomers. To represent this on the digital canvas, it’s best to vary the length and thickness of your strokes for a natural-looking result. It’s also worth following the direction of growth to keep the painting looking as realistic and recognizable as possible.
Making a painting look alive really comes down to how the light hits the subject. Decide where your light source is and then think about where the highlights and shadows would naturally fall. For highlights, a dry brush is a quick and easy method, or you could blend upwards using glazing. Shadows need to be blended in to soften their edges.
Two places where highlights can really make the difference in pet portraits are the eyes and nose. These tend to be shinier than the rest of a pet's face (a dog nose is usually wet after all), so they give you the chance to really draw the eye to your dog portrait through bold highlights.
Now that the image is starting to take shape, you can add those final touches to really make it pop. Add in a few stray hairs for a more natural appearance. This is also the perfect time to play with color temperature; warm highlights and cooler shadows can really elevate a painting and make it jump out from the canvas.
This is also the time to make those final adjustments. A soft brush or glazing can unify the layers, avoiding any rough edges.
The real trick to painting a dog in acrylics and making it look realistic is getting the fur right. For this, we need to think about how hair grows and how it sits. Paint using short, distinct strokes in the direction the hair sits and don’t be afraid to cross the lines where necessary.
It’s also worth thinking about how to vary up the tones. While dogs might sometimes look like a solid color from a distance, they’ve almost certainly got subtle variations in tone through their fur so mix it up a little between layers. It’s also worth giving a bit of careful thought to how light and shadow fall on the fur as getting this right will really make a painting pop. This last point is particularly important if you want to paint realistic a black or white dogs.
One huge advantage that we’ve got versus the great patrons of the Renaissance is that digital techniques have really brought down the price of art. You can have a fun digital image of your pet (the perfect profile picture) for as little as $40.95.
If you want to hang them in your home, physical prints start at around $75 for a poster and top out at $175.95 for a canvas worthy of hanging in even the most refined doggy gallery.
If the reason you’re wondering how to paint a dog, you’ve got two options: paint it yourself or commission an artist.
Painting your pet portrait yourself could take you as little or as much time as you like, but commissioning an artist should come with some kind of timeframe. We have a turnaround time of 3 days or less on each dog painting. That’s not a long time to wait for a realistic pet portrait at all.
