Contemporary Pet Portraits by Dyanna Bruno

So Elvis has finally been completed and his mother is very pleased :) I will be packing him this weekend and shipping him off. I look forward to seeing her shoot some photo's of Elvis with his custom painting. I always LOVE to see when people receive their paintings and their pets with their custom artwork. It makes me feel like I am with them in their home :) I would like to share with you just a little bit about the process of creating Elvis' painting. When I first saw Elvis' photo, I'm not going to lie, I was a little bit overwhelmed. Not because he has spots, but because he has so many spots and so many layers of colors that I really wanted to make Elvis look as much like Elvis as I could. I might not of gotten all his markings perfect, but I think the main areas that distinguish his coat are there and anyone who knows Elvis would be able to look at his portrait and know that was him. I was also overwhelmed because he is so gorgeous and I really wanted to do an outstanding job in portraying him. Whenever I create a custom portrait, even if someone has won the painting, I always like to have their input on their favorite and least favorite colors because they are ones living with the painting and I want them to display it proudly instead of being stuck in some hutch in the far back corner. I asked Barbara (Elvis' mom) what her favorite and least favorite colors were. Originally I had thought either a yellow or blue background would look great with his color, but those were 2 of her not so favorite colors. And red or black , which were her favorites, would just make Elvis look muddy. She never mentioned anything about green, so when I asked, she said yes of course and that her family is big time archery hunters and her house is a rustic lodge theme. So I thought, what might be a great translation would be to take the greens and make a camouflage style background. This isn't my typical approach, but I think it came out very nicely and she was very excited with the outcome. Now that I have completed Elvis' portrait, I have quite a few more that I have to get started on right away. My next couple of pieces are all different sizes from an 8" x 10" to another 18" x 24". I look forward to sharing more work in progress photo's as well as my thought process for the pieces. I hope you have enjoyed watching the journey of Elvis being created on canvas! The top image of Elvis is a split screen of the photo that was submitted by Barbara for me to paint