Choosing the Right Medium for an Artistic Portrait of Your Pet

A quick Internet search will reveal that there are a lot of pet portraitists our there, each with at least one favorite medium, and most featuring a gallery of their work. You should be able to find a number of experts in any medium you choose for your commission, but making that decision may be difficult for some people who have little or no art experience themselves. As an artist I have experience with several different media, including pastel, pencil, colored pencil (including watercolor-pencil), charcoal, and acrylic, so here I will offer a comparison of these, along with one medium that I don't currently use myself, but with which I am familiar.

Graphite

Just about everyone has drawn, or tried to draw, something at some point in their lives, and chances are, they used a pencil. This everyday writing instrument actually has enormous artistic potential, which may not be fully appreciated by someone who has only ever done casual drawing experimentation with it. A graphite pencil can produce subtle and beautiful shading, and also an incredible amount of detail, picking up individual hair in fur, for example, which makes it an excellent choice for miniature commissions (8" x 10" and smaller).

Charcoal

Darker, and some ways more expressive than graphite, this medium captures a reasonable amount of detail, but is more ideally suited for larger portraits. It would be a good choice if you were commissioning a portrait of a pet with shiny black fur.

Colored pencil

Even though nowadays I use mostly the water-soluble version, I do have a lot of experience with regular colored pencils. Two of this medium's more important attributes are brilliance and a high level of detail. If you are commissioning anything smaller than 8" x 10", you might want to see about having it done on drafting film - more detail that way. A hazy patina known as "bloom" can be an issue with colored pencil, but artists today know how to address this problem with fixative, or by using oil-based pencils.

Pastel

Pastel is not really a medium of fine detail, but still one of my favorites. A pastel portrait will usually have a sort of soft-focus "sentimental" aspect, with smooth textures and shading. Some artists use fixative on their portraits; some don't. I have done portraits both ways. It's a trade-off: A fixed portrait is a lot less susceptible to smudging, but the colors will often be slightly duller. An unfixed portrait must be handled carefully and framed with mat-board and glass, but the colors retain their full brilliance.

Acrylic

An acrylic painting is somewhat similar to a watercolor, but unlike watercolor, it has actual, physical texture, owing to the fact that it's a heavy-bodied medium that retains brush marks. A couple of commonly used supports for it are hardboard and canvas. An acrylic portrait on hardboard can convey a lot of detail, but one on canvas doesn't have as great a need for framing, especially if the edge is painted all around.

Oil

Oil is arguably the champion of all painting media. It has wonderful color saturation, it can be used for portraits that are photo-realistic, and like acrylic, it retains brush marks. There are a number of artists out there creating beautiful pet portraits in oil. Having said that, the main reason I don't use it myself the time factor. The layers of an oil painting dry very slowly, sometimes taking a day or two for each layer, while acrylics can be ready for overpainting in less than an hour. The considerable amount of time required to create an oil painting is reflected in the price; however, a well-executed one is unquestionably a real art treasure.

A word about size

While very large painting commissions generally command greater prices than the average pet owner would want to spend, there is a trend developing nowadays toward miniature portraits, and miniature art in general. (A miniature is generally considered to be any picture 8" x 10" or smaller.) Part of the appeal of this art form is the economic factor. Small portraits take less time to produce, and therefore come at less cost to the customer. One product offered by some artists is a portrait that is the same size as a baseball card, called an "ACEO," which stands for "Art Cards, Editions, and Originals." These are available in a wide range of media, including, and especially, graphite and colored pencil.

Source: http://ezinearticles.com/6268936

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