Here’s a recent commission I did for a neighbour who was caring for her friend’s dog. As a Christmas gift, she wanted to get a painting done of the dog, so she took a bunch of pictures of the dog in her backyard and sent them to me.
It took me some time to figure out what to do with the background, as I felt the green grass and brown fence didn’t make the dog stand out, and would not look good in a painting, so I opened up the photo in Adobe Photoshop and started auto-filling the background with colours that would compliment the browns on the dog’s face.
I really liked how these new colours complimented the dog, so the only additional change I made is I made the horizon line where the grass met the fence a straight line, and levelled it with the dog’s eyes to draw attention there.
Adobe Photoshop is proving to be increasingly useful to me as I manipulate photos to make them work for paintings. It takes some time to figure out how to use all the tools available, but there a plenty of tutorials available to explain what each tool does.
Amanda Bennett Art 