Wild at Heart Illustration: Peluche Portrait

This year I decided I would do some pet portraits for friends of mine as holiday gifts. The first one was for my Bestie, Kim. She adopted a white fuzzball named Peluche. This dog had belonged to a Hispanic family before finding his forever home with Kim and Mike. He happens to be bilingual! Good thing Kim is too. He is also comically known as Das Poochin' or Fluffy One. I give him snuggles when I get to visit. He is a sweetie.

I know Kim prefered Peluche with a longer hair length. I toyed with blending some details from multiple photos to come up with my portrayal of the dog. I wanted to use the red bandana for the portrait because of the significance to Kim and Mike. They had traveled to Spain a few years back and witnessed the running of the bulls.They brought back the little red bandanna for their boy.

I loved this picture of Peluche is in full eager and happy smile. So I used that for my main reference and took my creative liberties.

I decided that white dogs are more challenging that black dogs. Oil pastel stain paper and layer. So I had to stain sections of the drawing and erase the first layer. Once that was done go in with alternate color pastels and pencils to create definition. Here is the piece in stages:

Another challenge on this piece was getting Peluche's eyes. They are DARK and getting the hair around them to properly shape them was tricky. My "stare and tweak" stage was mainly focused on the eyes. I also decided that I should drink a glass of wine during that stage. Talk about being a nutcase. My husband, Tim, witnessed this and asked me "do you do this every time?"

Why yes, yes I do.

The references are blended together and shown next to the finished work here.

Detail shots:

I got to see Kim, Mike, and her family on Christmas Eve. I couldn't wait! The suspense! I managed to not show her sneak peeks early though. I'm a horrible surpriser...I get too excited.