During the Christmas season I was contacted by a client to purchase a Gift Certificate for her sister. She wanted to give a pet portrait of little Bella, a Teacup Yorkie, but wanted her sister to have the option to help select reference photos of her sweet pup. (This is the type of scenario that Gift Certificates were totally made for!)
In early January I was sent photos of wee Bella, and narrowed it down to an adorable shot of her plunked down sat on the floor. In the planning stages we were going through background colour options, and she selected a nice medium bronzy brown tone. Shortly after, I had a lightbulb moment! How cool would this colour look in a metallic version? I ran it by her, and she was as excited as I was, so I started experimenting with different iridescent paint mediums to give the background colour a subtle pearl effect. And so we have here my first ever metallic background colour, which I’m pretty excited about!
It was difficult to capture the metallic paint sheen on camera (as seen in the photo above), so I opted to take a quick video with my phone. Although the resolution isn’t great, it manages to capture the effect at different angles nicely:
(if the video isn’t loading properly for you here, it can be viewed directly on my Instagram feed HERE)
The finished painting went to its home a few weeks ago, and I’m just catching up on blog posts now haha. But I couldn’t wait to sit down & finish this post so I could share it finally. I haven’t met Bella in person, but I hear that the painting is actually life sized! So she must be sooo tiny!! I want to meet her so bad 😀 lol. They are working on getting a doppelgänger pic for me of her with her portrait – I just can’t wait!!! To view a full image of Bella’s painting, please visit my Pet Portrait portfolio page.
What do you think of the metallic background effect?
