Michelle Wrighton Fine Art and Photography

This pet portrait is an acrylic painting of Moe, a gorgeous little pug that seems to be saying “Go ahead, Make my Day”, or maybe just “This IS my happy face!” Gotta love those pups with squished wrinkly faces!

8″x10″ gallery wrapped canvas

"This *IS* my Happy Face"

cards and prints featuring this artwork can be purchased at

Pug Breed Profile

Pug dog were originally developed in China over a thousand years ago. When they were taken to Europe by the Dutch East India Company, they became a favorite breed of royalty and the aristocracy.

Pugs are a small Toy breed, with an ideal weight range of 6.3-8.1kg (14-18lbs). They have square compact bodies, wrinkled skin and tightly curled tails.

Pugs are intelligent dogs that are even tempered with a happy and lively disposition that makes them very suitable as family pets. They have short smooth coats, but are heavy shedders for their size, so regular brushing is required, as well as cleaning of the wrinkles in their face to prevent infections developing.

Pugs are an indoor breed. They are relatively inactive indoors which makes them suitable for apartment living, as long as they receive regular exercise to avoid becoming overweight. They are quite playful, however due to their short noses, Pugs can have difficulties breathing so strenuous exercise, especially in hot weather, should be avoided. They can also be prone to skin and eye problems.

If a Pug sounds like the breed for you and your family, please contact a reputable breeder in your area, or better still, a Pug Rescue group such as the following:

Pug Rescue Victoria

Pug Rescue Inc

Pug Rescue Sydney

Perth Pug Rescue

Pug Rescue.com United States

Pug Welfare-Rescue United Kingdom

Two new dog breed portraits have now been added to the Dogs gallery, a Shiba Inu and another Shar-Pei (I just can’t resist wrinkles!). Both of these are color pencil/acrylic on drafting film.

Suki - Shiba Inu Pet Portrait

Aspen - Shar-Pei Painting

Buy Art prints and cards featuring this artwork from

This is a painting I am working on in between commissions for my own portfolio – it might seem a bit strange but I have very few pieces of my own artwork to show clients because most of the work I have done over the past few years have been sold.  Which of course is a good thing, but I would also like to enter a few competitions and can’t do that when I keep selling everything, so hopefully over the next few months I can add a few pieces (at least six) to my own collection here and there.

I’d also like to experiment with a much looser style and try out some more landscapes if I get a chance.  To help keep me motivated to achieve these goals, I’ve joined in the Australian Art Forum’s Winter Challenge with will run from 1 May to 1 September.

It seems that most artists that paint with a high degree of realism tend to produce  pet portraits with traditional landscapes or portrait backgrounds, and those artists that paint in a bold contemporary style usually don’t paint in highly realistic detail.  I would like to pursue a slightly different direction with some of my artwork, although I don’t think I will ever move away from my realistic and ‘up close and personal’ style, I want to explore combining that with modern contemporary backgrounds.   Bright bold background colours and landscapes full of beautiful saturated colours that border on the real/surreal/hyper real.  Will it work?  Can it be done?  LOL, who knows, but I am sure it will be fun to find out:)

This one is likely to take a while to complete as I am fitting it in between commissions.  ‘Poppy’ is 16″x20″ on gallery wrapped canvas.  This is a big experiment as acrylic is a new medium that I am teaching myself how to use.  The thing I love about being self-taught is that you can try new and unusual techniques because no ‘expert’ teacher has deemed there is a right way and a wrong way.

Personally, I think as long as you use good quality artist’s materials, you can’t go far wrong by simply experimenting to find out what works (or dosn’t) for you:)

So here goes my experiment with ‘Poppy’.  I’ve deliberately chosen to offset the black labrador to the right hand side of the canvas, and to use a landscape orientation rather than portrait.  My vision for this one is to have the dog sitting a a field of red poppies. So I have to learn how to paint flowers as well, which will be fun:)

The first image shows my sketch of the Poppy, and the beginning of the background field, which has been created with many thin glaze layers of paint which has taken about 3.5 hours so far.

The next progress shot shows how I have started to block in the main shapes (shadows and highlights) in the underpainting using various dilutions of paynes grey.

More work on the underpainting and additional glazes on the background.

Stay tuned for the next updates on Poppy!

Michelle

This is my latest painting of a gorgeous rescue Greyhound “Teddy”.  Rendering his fur realistically was a bit of a challenge.  I will probably leave this for a few days then make some minor adjustments before varnishing it.

This one is acrylic on gallery wrapped canvas.

Michelle

This is the first full acrylic painting I have done using Art Spectrum Colourfix paper as the support (I usually only use for acrylic to paint the background or underpainting then add the details with colour pencil). This one of ‘Kruger’ is 9″x12″.

This support seems to work exceptionally well to help portray the bristly nature of the Shar-Pei fur (although their coat’s look soft and silky, they are actually a bit harsh and prickly!).

I get so involved when I am painting that I always forget to stop and take photos so that I can post a work in progress post, but I managed to get a couple this time, the first is the initial sketch, the second with a partial underpainting and then the final portrait.

This Shar-Pei pet portrait features on dog breed merchandise such as stationery, clothing, prints, greeting cards, tote bags and more.

Michelle

Apart from some minor adjustments that I might add in the next day or so, this is the (almost) completed portrait of our Chinese Shar-Pei, Tia.

Achieving depth and dimension with her black coat and all those wrinkles was a great challenge, but I thoroughly enjoyed working on this and I am really pleased with the resulting portrait, although I might need to get a better photograph in better light!

“Tia”

Pastels on Velour Art Paper

10″ x 14″

Tia - Shar Pei Pet Portrait in Pastels

2006

This is the reference photo I used for Tia’s portrait – as you can probably see I took this photo with the flash on (something that is not usually recommended), just to make sure that I could see all the curves and contours of her wrinkly face! Most of the photos I have of her are either very black, or if she is in full sunlight, her eyes will be closed, so using the flash was the best way to get a nice detailed photo, then it was simply a matter of making her fur darker than it appeared in the photo to make it look like my dog rather than the washed out/faded reference photo.

This Shar-Pei art pet portrait features on dog breed merchandise such as stationery, prints, greeting cards, tote bags and more.

Shar-Pei Breed Info: Shar-Pei’s are an ancient dog breed, and are still fairly rare, although thanks to tv commercials such as the toilet roll ad with the wrinkly puppy, “Rolly” they are becoming more popular.

The breed is best known for its wrinkled apprearance which is caused by the excess skin they have. generally puppies and young dogs appear to have more wrinkles as older dogs grow into their skin a little bit. (This is actually a good thing, as Shar-Pei’s do suffer from skin conditions do to the wrinkles and rough fur irritating the skin.)

The name “Shar-Pei” literally means “sand-skin”, or loosely translated to “sand-paper-like coat” which refers to the unique characteristics of the Shar-Pei coat – its roughness and its shortness. The Shar-Pei also has another distinctive characteristic that is shared with only one other breed, the Chow Chow (also a Chinese breed) – both breeds have a blue-black tongue!

Of course I am biased, but Shar-Pei’s are an incredible breed – totally devoted to their families, highly intelligent and excellent watch/guard dogs!

More information on the Shar-Pei breed can be found at http://www.sharpei.com.au/

Cheers

Michelle

I am thoroughly enjoying working with this velour paper with my pastels and I am really pleased with how this portrait of Marcus, a Long Haired Dachshund has turned out. I can see that my pastels and this velour support and quickly going to become my favourite medium for working in.

I couldn’t help myself, after finishing this one I have finally started a portrait of my own dog Tia, she is a black Shar-Pei and it is proving to be a very interesting challenge creating black wrinkles that look realistic! I will add a blog entry with her portrait when it is finished.

This is my latest commission, a graphite portrait of a gorgeous black Labrador Retriever. Hasn’t she got the sweetest looking face? I’m very pleased with how this turned out although getting good digital images of graphite work is near on impossible!

This scanned image is about the closest I can get to the original, although alot of the delicate shading in the original is not evident, particularly in the highlighted areas.

Labrador Breed Information

Labrador Retrievers are a loving, affectionate, intelligent breed that is one of the most popular dog breeds in Australia. Highly intelligent, loyal, willing, good natured and excellent with children they are ideal companions for families. Labradors are easily trained and need to be treated as one of the family, otherwise like many breeds they can become destructive. Labradors are medium sized energetic dogs that need a fair bit of excercise. Their smooth short haired coat, which can be black, yellow or chocolate in colour, is easy to groom and they should be bathed only when necesary. They have a life expectancy of about 10-12 years

Labradors originated in New Foundland where they were originally known as St John Dogs or the Lesser New Foundland (Newfoundland’s are another breed of dog). Labrador is a peninsular in north-eastern North America situated between Hudson Bay, the Atlantic and the Gulf of St. Lawrence. Labradors were originally developed to assist the fishermen in towing in nets as well as working in the snow and ice. These dogs were taken to England where they were bred as gun dogs and retrievers. Labs are easily trained and their intelligence and lovely disposition makes them very suitable for work as guide, service and customs dogs.

If you would like to be notified of updates to my blog, please click on the orange buttons in the colum on the right to add this to your RSS Feed (atom and feedburner) or enter you email addy and subscribe to recieve updates into your mailbox.

Michelle

This is probably my favourite piece that I have done this year. The look in this dog’s eyes just says it all, he is laying there patiently waiting for his owner to come back.

This piece was completed purely in colour pencils on cream Stonehenge paper and took well over 55 hours of work to complete. It was worth it though, because it was awarded First Place in the Painting & Drawings: Animals class at the second Art Show I entered last month – pretty amazing seeing as colour pencil is such a new Fine Art medium, and because the other entries included oils, acrylics and pastels!

Cheers

Michelle

pencilportraits.com.au

This is one of the commissions I have just finished – definitely one of the hardest I have done due to the lack of detail in the original reference photo (shown below). Unfortunately this beautiful dog recently passed away and so no additional photos could be taken. Considering the lack of detail that was in the photo I am really pleased how this one turned out. What do you think?

Michelle

http://www.pencilportraits.com.au