ALASKA the German Shorthaired Pointer
8” x 8” oil on board
I felt pretty intimidated by the stare of this dog as I sketched her out. I flicked through the newspaper and it wasn’t till the crossword puzzle page that I found the clue to her character- from that point onwards she developed a ‘Sherlock Holmes’ / detective kind of persona! It seemed to fit with her intense quizzical stare...the fact that the crossword formed a kind of tweed pattern seemed very fitting! So that has led me to start painting her in a particular way too... putting the paint strokes down as though they are pieces of a puzzle.
Funny how sometimes a creative idea takes you off in a direction that you might not otherwise have considered!
I love how she has ‘wonderfully relaxed’ above one eye and ‘beware-chunks’ over the other!!