Meet Kimi, a pretty lurcher. In this painting I wanted to challenge myself to paint a long haired dog and to keep the painting loose and free flowing. Kimi has lots of blond hair so she is perfect for this!

I met Kimi in the summer and had taken some photos of her. Of course she’s very fast and I have plans to paint her in motion, but this time one of the close up photos caught my attention. I liked the angle of her head as she looks up and her beautiful eyes so I chose this pose for a study of her. This is a 12×10 inch acrylic painting on board.

Here is a close up…

Doesn’t she have gorgeous eyes!

Where do ideas for paintings come from? I thought I’d share how I came to paint this 10×8 painting of lurcher Dash. Ideas can come from odd places and sometimes it’s the unexpected that give you inspiration. The idea for this little painting came from a combination of things. First of all Tabitha Woods added a photo of her lurcher Dash to my facebook page because she thought Dash would make a good model.

Then the snow here in London melted and as I walked through my local park I saw an amazing tree. It still had some yellow green leaves, despite having been buried in the show. And underneath the tree was a carpet of orange autumn leaves. In the sun it was breathtaking! I loved the colour combination and when I looked again at the photo of Dash I ‘saw’ this painting in my minds eye.

So here it is, a quick study in Autumn colours staring Dash.

It’s a 10×8 inch acrylic painting. Here is a close up. I love the lilac shadows.

If you’d like to add photos to my facebook page as ideas for me to paint please do feel free. Follow this link and click the ‘like’ button to be able to post photos to the wall. You can also see the original photo of Dash on my facebook page.