Published: Mar 3, 2020
This is Daisy, a sweet Golden Retriever. Unfortunately, she passed away from cancer over a year ago. Her owner's sister commissioned me to paint four paintings of Daisy for the family. This commission project took nearly a year to complete -- which is far longer than I had expected that it would. It took me quite a while to figure out what was best for each of the paintings; from being unsatisfied with the sketch and having to start over, to choosing poor colour mixes first then having to fix it, learning new techniques, feeling uninspired and getting down on myself and my abilities, needing to take breaks for my creative energy and happiness, etc. I would paint for a bit, and then give the painting a rest and come back to it after a while to evaluate my work and if I liked where it was going... are the colours working well together, is the likeness there?
I'm slightly embarrassed to say how long it took me to finish these paintings. At first, I wasn't going to write how long it took me to get this project done and I was only going focus on the positive, but I want to be transparent and authentic on my website and blog. That's one of the reasons why I started this blog is to be vulnerable and thorough in talking about my art and creative endeavours and to get away from the often hollow captions that you see on places like instagram.
So, yes, it took me about 10 months to get these four paintings finished. I took breaks to focus on my other creative outlets and passions and I worked on things in my life that are not directly related to art. I am working toward getting my commission projects completed faster and to push through my thoughts of self-doubt, anxiety, and procrastination that I face while making them -- but I also don't want to feel ashamed for needing more time to work through things so that I can do my best quality of work. Creating art is a continuous learning process and sometimes you take wrong turns and have to start over. Take the time you need to do your best work and to keep from burning out.
Making these paintings taught me new techniques and broaden my painting horizons, so I'm happy to have had the opportunity to paint them and I'm satisfied with how they turned out. My client was very pleased with them which also makes me happy.
This is the first painting in the collection that I completed. I had originally started making a different one, but I didn't like it and needed to start over anew. My first drawing was off (her muzzle was too long and her eyes too close together) and I didn't like the colour mixes that I used for the fur... so I studied my mistakes and what I didn't like and took that knowledge and started again. Unfortunately, most of the images that I had to work with were quite poor quality and two of them had parts of the dog cut out, so I had to improvise and make some guesses, which I would rather not have to do, but it is doable.
This is the second painting. I was really excited to work with the full-body perspective and fur texture. I had the most fun with this one. I am really pleased with how the fur came out!
This is the third painting. The other two previous paintings got finished a couple of months before the last two did. In the image for this painting, her back-end and tail was cut out of the picture, so I had to improvise a little.
This one was the most challenging of the four. The dog and cat were on a darkly coloured rug and the lighting was very dark and part of the dog was cropped out. I decided to simplified the rug to a wet-on-wet wash of colours and make them lighter and more vibrant so that this painting would somewhat match the other three. I struggled a bit with this one, but I really enjoyed painting a dog and a cat together in the same picture -- I hadn't done that before.
And that's all for now!
Thank you very much for reading! Feel free to comment and start a conversation!
Til next time,
Cheyenne
Awesome job my Dear Daughter...as with all others...I know how hard you worked at these paintings...many many hours...little do people realize the emotional effort as well as all else that a true artist puts into their work...if no one else is happy with the art piece...the creating artist must be...I seen your earnest efforts...no need to apologize...I, your Mother know the effort you invest into all you do...I am truly proud of YOU! Much love and pride from me...Your Mammy! I LOVE YOU! 💕💕💕💕💕💕💕💕💕🥵💕💕💕💕💕💕💕💕💕💕🤗💕💕💕💕☺️