16″ by 20″, pastels on suede paper
I took inspiration (and my reference photo) for this piece from Paul Croes, an animal photographer who has a whole collection dedicated to dogs. This was great for me because primarily, I’m a major dog person, and secondarily, every year my art teacher Mrs. Mier encourages me to submit a piece for our local dog show’s art competition. His works, as a whole, are so well composed that I would have considered it a crime not to take inspiration from him. With his Borzoi photos as a reference (with his permission), my goal was to make this piece as unnecessarily dramatic as possible. As such, I drew attention to the dog’s head and body with more extreme lights and darks, with some fog and blur to obscure his paws. I wanted to keep everything simple yet effective, so I kept the background minimalistic.