Just finished - pet portrait

Yesterday I put the final strokes of paint on a English Cocker Spaniel that I was painting for a member of the shop. Now I wait for it to dry before I send it off to the framer, another member of our co-op. While, as a decorative and functional artist I paint on unusual pieces, my first love is oil painting, especially portraiture. When painting a portrait I believe it should tell a story and emotionally draw the viewer in. Head shots are easy to paint but are static. An example of this is a portrait commission that I did for a Father's Day gift. I paint from photographs so when I posed this subject I told the teen that the picture should represent her at 16 and when her father is old this picture should tell the story of her at 16. The first request was that she have a cell phone in her hand. She loved playing lacrosse and her dad coached her in recreational basketball so she wanted those items in the portrait. She picked her favorite clothes. Painting a 16 year old is sometimes a challenge: "Make me thinner". Her seven year old brother was a piece of cake. He ran to his closet and picked out his favorite shirt and baseball bat. His dad often played catch with him and he wanted to be represented as a seven year old who loved baseball. Needless to say this family was a sports oriented family. Below are the pictures I completed and were presented to "Dad" as a surprise Father's Day gift. It was a fun commission.