Creating the Purrfect Pawtrait

Sometimes your pet is in the ideal pose in a photo, but there are little things that obscure a portion of it, or you want to add something.

This is no issue for a portrait drawing!

Removing or combining elements is quite simple.

Let’s have a look at this one:

Although we thought the first pose was prettier and had more depth for the drawing, we also thought the flowers in the second picture were a great addition to the composition.

To make a mock-up of the final portrait, I mixed the two components using GIMP, which is basically a free version of Photoshop. Additionally, it allows you to experiment with various background colours.

This was the completed portrait of this beautiful girl.

Another example – this one was a little more involved!

This was the reference image, but without the Christmas outfits. The dog on the left was easy to draw because it was a head and shoulders drawing, while the second pup was a little trickier, with the Christmas hat covering one side of the face.

In this additional reference photo, the upper portion of the head was fairly similar to the original photo. In this instance, I selected the top portion and adhered the ears to the original image and changed the sizes to match, again using GIMP.

And this was the resulting portrait:

The beauty of custom portraits is that it’s absolutely possible to create the perfect artwork by combining elements from several reference photos!