A dear client who has commissioned me many times commissioned me once more to do a dog portrait of her beautiful Callaway. Callaway was an extremely loyal and special dog to my client so I knew I needed to blow this dog portrait completely out of the water. I love working on dog portraits, they each have extremely unique personalities. Golden Labradors are always fun to do dog portraits of as they have so much colours in their coat. The handsome Callaway has peaches, pinks and blues in his coat.

I thoroughly enjoyed working on Callaway, Labs have very interesting shaped heads. They have a very domed skulls, with a fairly short wide nose. And it shows even more in a side view.

This dog portrait went relatively to plan, I wanted to make his eyes a little more curious. He has rather a grumpy face in the original photo. So I wanted to lift his brow to make him less grumpy more curious.

Callway's dog portrait progress photos

Here you can see my progress shots Callaway’s dog portrait. As you can see I work section by section for this piece. Because Labradors have quite short hair it meant that my pencil strokes we short and thin. This allowed me to layers quite a few colours to make the hue I needed. I chose to do his nose last as I love drawing noses, so I wanted something I could look forward to complete the dog portrait.

I really hope you love Callaway, I thoroughly enjoyed working on him. His owner absolutely adored it. Here is her testimonial of the dog portrait.

"Love love the portrait of Callaway. Your work shows every bit of your passion and talent. Thanks so much for making this portrait so special for me."