Before the summer, Kellie asked me to do a painting for her friend Ray whose dog BoBo had just passed on. I said to Kellie of course I would love to do the project, the only problem was we were packing up our house in Hong Kong and sending everything onto a container ship for Japan. During the summer we were back home in the States and taking the kids to summer camps and lots of running around. Now we've finally arrived in Japan, I really need to pick up the brushes and start painting again.
Looking at the picture Kellie gave me, I thought I wanted to convey a sense of peacefulness through this painting, and to give the owners Ray and his partner some sense of solace that their beloved girl is in a place free of pain and is at peace. I wanted to the keep the tone of the picture subdue. In the picture BoBo had a subtle smile, and I thought it was very important for me to capture that.
The painting was done on a Japanese F3 size canvas (F3 is 22x27cm... like a 8x10in. I still yet have to learn the different canvas size system here). I first prepared the canvas with black acrylic paint. During the summer I went onto Blicks.com and bought several new tubes of greys and whites from Gamblin, so many of the new colors were used here. The color combination is generally based on warm shadow and cool light.
BoBo RIP.
