Painting Pup Portraits in Acrylics

This past week my sis invited me to her house for a painting day. It was my first time painting pup portraits with acrylics, and it was a lot of fun.

Before we starting painting though, I had to get some kisses from my sister's adorable pup Stella.

She wasn't totally thrilled with being a model for my photography, but she looks so darn cute on this turquoise chair... I couldn't resist snapping some pics of her! (Because: turquoise. And what's better than dogs + turquoise!?)

Name that movie! (Note: quote is slightly tweaked)

Anyway, after some kisses from Stella, we got down to painting. I, of course, attempted to paint Rita. It came out a little wonky... her nose is a bit too long or something's off a bit, but I like it.

In the past, I've painted with watercolors, and I usually try to make the subject look as close to reality as possible, so it was fun to be a bit more loose and just paint for plain ol' fun.

I also painted a random little Westie from a photo I found online. Again... it's not great (btw, both of these look a lot better in the photos than they do in real life...) but, again... it was fun!

One thing that's great about acrylics is being able to paint over your boo-boos, and I did A LOT of that with the Westie! (With watercolors, if you really mess up, you're stuck.)

Also, my sis took a painting class recently and the instructor said it's important to use good quality paints for watercolors, but with acrylics you can get away with cheaper ones, so that's another good thing. (Of course... with watercolors, you water them down so they last a long time, so there's that...)

Finally, both the paintings above are done on scraps of cardboard - so no worries about how much "good paper"/canvas costs and whether you might "ruin" it. For watercolors, you really need good paper, so that's definitely another bonus to painting with acrylics.

You should try it! Just for fun! 

(Rita was thoroughly unimpressed with my work...)

"Can I eat it?"

Book News!
Speaking of fun... I have a new Fido-friendly fiction book coming out and this one is really just for fun. (I don't know about you, but I need some fun these days.)

If you're signed up for my author newsletter, you'll already know I was hitting folks up for ideas for the title or tag line (and offered a giveaway!). If you're not signed up but want to get book news first - you can sign up on the right hand bar of my blog home page, or here.

More book news will be coming as it gets closer.... Don't have an exact release date yet, but hoping for late September or maybe October. We'll see how it goes!

I'll be taking a break next week July 4th holiday.

Happy 4th to those of you who'll be celebrating it!

Thanks to BlogPaws for hosting Wordless Wednesday! Stop by their site to check out all of the other blogs in the hop.