Supplies for Drawing Pet Portraits

Owning a pet can be an extremely satisfying endeavor, and so it is no wonder that millions of people around the world keep companion animals in their lives. The most common pets are by far, cats and dogs, however, the rising popularity of exotic pets has led to an increase of people owning snakes, lizards, rats, mice, and hamsters. Fish are also a popular pet for people who do not want too much responsibility. Studies have shown that owning a pet is actually beneficial to both the mental and physical health of the owner. In fact, there are now medically backed studies showing that therapy animals can significantly improve the well being of many patients.

In this free video series, commemorate your love for your pet with a oil painting. Our expert, Matt Cail, shows you how to turn a photograph into a perfect pet portrait. Learn the supplies you need to make a pet portrait. Also, learn how to paint the background, floor, bookshelf, and chair in the picture. Finally, learn how to paint your beloved pet, in this case a dog, with some simple brush strokes. So, what are you waiting for? Make your member of the family feel welcome with a homemade pet painting.

"The first step is making sure we have all of our supplies together for our pet portrait today. This is going to start off with a variety of oil paints. There's actually going to be a lot of different colors we're going to be using for this particular subject. But just some of the key ones of course are going to be white, black, cause our dog's going to be gray. We're also even going to have a specialized gray shade for that. We're also going to have some other shades like burnt sienna, burnt umber, raw sienna, for like that nice ruddy, red color. As well as like a radiant lemon, a nice kind of more pale yellow color, just to name a few. In addition we're also going to have a lot of brushes. Now, some of the brushes I especially recommend are having some larger flat head brushes, which we're going to use to apply over broad swaths to the canvas for some of our larger color regions. But also don't neglect to have some of the smaller brushes like some small round brushes, as well, for some of the detail work we're also going to be doing today. Next we have a palette knife, which we're going to be using to mix up the paint and also to apply some paint to the canvas as well. We're also going to be using a specialized pencil. This is going to help transfer our inspirational photograph onto the canvas, but you have to watch out, some types of pencil will actually show through canvas, so you're going to have make sure that you get pencils that basically don't do that. Oftentimes the softer-lead variety or actually non-lead pencils are the best for that. We are also going to be using some media. This is going to be used to mix up with the paint, make it more translucent, make it thin, and so on. And of course, also you're going to need the canvas on which to put your wonderful pet portrait today."