Before and After: Finished portraits with their source photos

Lindsey, Yellow Lab Mix. The soft, natural side lighting in this photo made it perfect for a portrait.

If this photo had been taken with flash, I never would have been able to capture those deep, soulful eyes.

Britt, Welsh Springer Spaniel. When doing a portrait after a pet has died, we have no choice but to use whatever photos are available. Having several to work from helps.

I chose the top right photo for the main pose (that cocked head!) and natural side-lighting, but filled in the over-exposed highlights with the other photos. I restored her natural ear from the other pictures, as well.

Maggie Maggee, Irish Setter. I took this photo of my dog in the early 1980s on black and white film. I love the natural side-lighting, but the film was not able to capture the full range of grays = too much contrast.

I used Photoshop and my own discretion to read more details into the shadows and highlights, creating a portrait with a more natural range of lights and darks.

Rosie, Standard Poodle. My current canine companion is real challenge to draw, being all black. I never recommend using flash on a photo destined to become a portrait, but that is especially true for all black or all white dogs. Flash flattens all the shadows and highlights, making it very difficult to see where anything is.

I took Rosie outside in bright shade to get this soft lighting from above, to highlight her muzzle, top-knot, and ears. Then I used Photoshop to exaggerate the highlights (she doesn't really look that purple! ;-) before doing her portrait. Since I had Rosie right in front of me as I drew, I could tell the camera had exaggerated the size of her nose, so I corrected it.

Miss Kitty looked like she was posing for her portrait on a throne! Flash makes all cat's eyes glow bright yellow, but I had the advantage of knowing Miss Kitty in person, so I knew her eyes were really greenish yellow. She also has a pink-beige undertone to her coat that the photo doesn't show.

In the portrait, I restored the proper color of her eyes, removed the pupil's glow, and straightened out the color and perspective in the plant stand she was using as a throne.

Kitty. Again, working from old pictures of a deceased cat, I had few choices.

Normally I would favor poses where the animal is looking outward, but for cats, sometimes the intent gaze captures their personalities very nicely.

Buddy's has something interesting in her sights!

Smooschie is curled up with her eyes at half-mast, ready to drift off into a contented nap.

Group portraits are tricky because the lighting must be the same for both pictures. But how many times have you been able to take a good picture of two animals at the same time?! (Right! Hard enough to get one!) At least Bart and Tali were still around, so I sent their mom outside to shoot of dozens of photos of them in the same lighting. The goal was to photograph them facing the same direction in the same light -- bright shade in their back yard.

Bart and Tali, Belgian Tervurens. Oil pastel, 16x20 inches.

Because I had so many photos to work from, I could not only position Bart and Tali facing each other, but also open up Bart's eyes, and correct the color or Tali's coat.

I wanted to do a group portrait of our late cats as a gift for my mother several years ago. The challenge assembling any group portrait is to find photos that an be convincingly combined. That is doubly challenging when the subjects are no longer available to pose for new photos! I found one photo (right above) with Smooschie and Leroy together -- that was a hopeful start. After much searching, I found Kitty, not only lit similarly from the front, but even looking the same direction! I was able to combine the two photos of the three cats in the painting below.