Old Rocky (Zach)

by Godfrey J. Ellis – 18×20 Acrylic Jan 2021

I was working on another portrait of a granddaughter when I was interrupted by a message from a friend who was a web designer.  He and I had agreed to have me paint his beloved dog, Rocky, as a work-for-work trade for a website he was building for me.  That was fine, but he had procrastinated getting me a decent photo of the dog. A few days ago, Rocky had died. He sent me the only two photos he had. Both were looking down at the dog, who was looking at the lens. That had resulted in a large head with little legs sticking out below.  Now, it was too late to get a better photo. The one he slightly preferred showed Rocky with large swatches of fur that had turned white and only one eye showed.  I messaged him to ask, “If I do the one you like, it looks like he has one eye closed. I am assuming you would want me to put an open eye there.” He replied, “No, he only had one eye at that end, and I’m perfectly ok with it not being there.”  Yikes! The other photo, which showed Rocky in the kitchen, had the same distorted legs and was dark and badly over-exposed. It had more potential, although I didn’t know how I was going to make a silk purse out of that one, either. Here is the photo:

In somewhat of a panic, I contacted three of the amazing pet artists in my FaceBook art group for help.  Together, we digitally lightened the second photo, cropped out the truncated legs, and gave it a green halo background.  I also took the pink tongue from the photo with no eye and pasted it onto this version.  It looked pretty good after that and I felt a whole lot better – like maybe I could actually do something after all.  Here is the digitally revised reference photo:

Here is the photo of the owner of Rocky proudly holding the painting of his dear and recently departed pet, Rocky.

Below are three photos of the painting as it took form. The third one has some markings that reminded me of various aspects that I needed to modify and correct: