How I Painted a Pet Portrait in Acrylic on Hardboard

Here is a commissioned portrait I did of two dogs, an 8 x 10, acrylic on hardboard. When you want to capture fine detail, especially on a small scale, hardboard is the way to go. It's so much smoother than canvas, and so the paint just glides right over the surface, whereas with canvas you have to struggle sometimes to get the paint to sink into the pores of the fabric weave.

Below is an in-progress picture of the painting. I start out by just arranging the colors and values in the right places, and work the entire painting at once, in stages. For something like this, I use a lot of raw umber dark, raw sienna and burnt sienna. It's important to differentiate the background from the foreground (the dogs and pillow) by making the background darker and cooler in tone. And so for that, I use ultramarine blue and a few shades of brown to make a blueish gray.

That really helps the dogs to "pop" and come forward in space.

Finally, I paint the details on the top.

It takes a lot of patience to achieve the realism, but it's worth the end result to hang in there and finish the painting so the client is happy with it and it brings them enjoyment for years to come!

I would love to hear your thoughts on this painting.

'Til next time, God bless and I'll talk to you soon,

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See more of my artwork at: MattPhilleo.com