Tag Archives: pets

Bad Pet Portraits

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Animals are my joy and consolation. If I’m struggling to concentrate, cramped by artistic angst, or simply need to warm up my drawing brain before starting work, it’ll be a bird, a dog, a horse, or sometimes a cat. (Cats are so much harder and it drives me round the bend sometimes.) But especially, it’ll be dogs. By the time I’ve scribbled half a dozen, my brain has usually caught up with my hand, (or is it the other way around?) and I’m ready to tackle a forklift or a crane… Who am I kidding? Never a forklift or a crane. Please don’t ask me to draw a forklift. Probably not a corkscrew. (Forklift authors, you know who you are.)

Anyway, when I noticed a little fundraising event coming up called Bad Pet Portraits, that raises funds for an organisation called Pets of the Homeless, my first thought was ‘I wonder if they would accept an erratic and occasionally good pet portraitist.’ Because this was for me!

We work to help keep vulnerable people and their pets together by alleviating the burden of providing essential pet care during times of hardship. Pets of the Homeless.

Happily, they didn’t seem to care at all what kind of pet portraitist I am, and I was signed up for a few hours of manic pet drawing. I’ve participated in two of their fundraisers now. The first time I attempted to make my portraits ‘bad’ or at least a bit funny, with mixed results. But really the stars of this show are the people like Phil Heckels whose pet portraits are pure magic and I can’t compete with that. So the second time around, I decided to just draw pets the way I draw pets, with the simple rule that I would draw them quickly and not fuss over them. In this I mostly succeeded and you can see some of the results below. (I did 23 in total, including a goat and several cats.)

This giant pooch, (a Great Dane mix perhaps?) died the day after my portrait was submitted and the owner was very grateful to have the portraits. (I did two of that one.) I felt so sad for the owner, but so glad I had drawn the dog.

Then artist Liz King-Sangster asked me if I’d draw her muse and beloved dog Gypsy. And here she is below. She has the most excellent ears and a happy face with a soft expression. I did fuss a little over Gypsy. Liz sent me the below photo as reference, with Gypsy lying on the ground looking very angular and with her front paws on the pebbles. I will not lie. I found the foreshortening somewhat challenging and the first time I drew her, I mistook her knee for a tail, and her tail for a very long foot! After lightening the photo, I discovered the truth. But ultimately, this pose defeated me. I couldn’t capture her expression, or her front feet! I have several sketches that demonstrate my struggles, but you will not be seeing them here. The most successful of them made her look cross-eyed.

Gypsy – the softest bag of coat hangers ever seen. All angles.

Not to be a quitter, I decided to look through Lizzie’s Instagram feed for more pictures of Gypsy to warm up on, and found this gorgeous photo of her looking slightly damp and full of joy. I can’t say the foreshortening was any less significant, but it worked okay this time, and I seem to have accidentally de-magnified her nose!

This next photo features Gypsy on her throne with a royally amused expression. My second attempt got closest to the humour, but I still haven’t nailed it. It’s all in the eyes. And true to form I drew it on the bottom corner of a bit of paper, so that I had to squish her royal highness onto the page.

Lastly, I found this rather hilarious photo of Gypsy with her squishy rugby ball, squinting her eyes in a very knowing way. The resulting drawing may not be Liz’s favourite of the images, but it made me smile. Fittingly it has returned to the true Bad Pet Portrait ethos.

I hope I get to meet the real Gypsy one day.

For anyone who is interested, the next Bad Pet Portraits event is in March 2022.

The Beagle (A Graduation Celebration)

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This is Noodle. Her origins are unknown, and we adopted her as a ‘beagle mix’ three years ago. Probably she has a fair bit of staffie in her and perhaps Jack Russell Terrier. I have said that I‘ll get her DNA tested one day to see what she really is, but perhaps that would disappoint. We have always called her The Beagle.

Here she is, in the arms of a shelter staff member, after having done her time as a stray in the pound. If you think her front leg looks a bit weird, you’d be right. Shortly after this photo was taken, her deformed front leg was amputated. Just ten days later, we adopted her, with stitches running half way around her torso. Very Frankenweenie.

We had hopes that she would be an up-close-and-personal-couch-companion for the family. In this expectation she has never disappointed. Despite the fact that there are frequently arguments over who will get The Beagle, (and not just among the children… ahem!) she manages to share herself around with admirable diplomacy. But her skills do not end there. She has a cat-like ability to make herself comfortable which is seemingly enhanced by the lack of one front leg. She‘s able to curl up into a very satisfying ball.

  • The Arm Chair
  • The Armpit (slumbering husband further up)
  • in somebody’s bed
  • the Chocolate Sauce (Don’t look for anatomical accuracy here. She is technically liquid in this position.)
  • the Rita Hayworth
  • The Chocolate sauce (different view)
  • The Double Dog
  • The Bed Too Small (I have failed to adequately communicate the too-smallness of this bed.)
  • in somebody’s bed
  • The Circle, also inaccurately known as the Chocolate Doughnut (there is no hole, after all.)
  • rare photograph of The Chocolate Doughnut (also inaccurately called The Bagel)

Like anyone loitering around this house for long, she is frequently used as a model for drawings and she has appeared in various books.

Cameo appearance of Noodle in ‘Searching for Cicadas’ by Lesley Gibbes, Walker Books, 2019. With added leg.
Supporting role with added leg and white gown for ‘When You‘re Older’ by Sofie Laguna, to be published by Allen and Unwin. (Her costume has since changed.)
Noodle will even be visiting the Arctic soon, wearing an added leg and a Fair Isle jumper. (‘When You‘re Older’ by Sofie Laguna.)

Legend has it that beagles have a hearty appetite and a talent for mischief. Along with this they have a politically dangerous belief that they need not obey the directives of humans. In this they may be ahead of their time, and not for the novice dog owner. In plain language, they will raid wastepaper baskets, chew up your cushions, take your dinner from the table if you leave room to fill up your wine glass, and won’t come back when you take them to the park for a pleasant stroll. In the absence of genetic proof, we have always found this legend to be the most compelling argument in favour of Noodle being a beagle.

Yesterday I was working in my studio with the fire burning. Everyone else was in their Remote School or Remote Office*. But Noodle‘s favourite too-small-bed-by-the-fire was empty. Upstairs I heard the curious noise of rustling paper. I hastened towards the noise and found that Noodle had opened the lid of the kitchen pedal bin and helped herself to the aromatic baking paper we had used to line the oven tray the night before. (Chicken kiev). Given that the bin is considerably taller than the three-legged, genetically unconfirmed beagle, I considered this no uncommon achievement. Bravo, little Beagle. You have made it.

*Dear reader from the Year 2025, Remote School and Remote Office were plush-lined space ships that hovered over suburban homes in 2020, wherein people went to work or school. Although small pets were generally welcome, Noodle could not manage the rope ladder.

Dogs from the past

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Looking at Liz King-Sangster‘s blog the other day, I so enjoyed her lovely paintings of her everyday surroundings. And it reminded me of a time when I used to paint with oils several evenings each week. That was long ago, when I was living in Brixton, London in a shared house, and working in the Aldwych Theatre box office.

During the evenings in the shared flat, comprising two floors above a lawyer’s office (and without a fire escape), wine flowed, cheese was consumed, friends chatted while I painted. Sometimes friends posed for my paintings. Many of those paintings ended up in the skip in the back yard of the rented property, before I caught a plane home to Australia. Some paintings came home by ship, and some went to the people who had posed for portraits.

That habit of painting continued after my return to Australia for a little while. Then work and circumstances called a halt. At the moment, while I am indulged enough by my family to have the largest bedroom of the house as my studio, (we sleep in the smallest bedroom) and there is space enough for computer equipment, drawing board and shelves, there is not room enough to paint at an easel, or even on the floor.

Looking at these two oil sketches of our dog Giddy the Hungarian Vizsla, painted not long after my return to Australia, I notice that it is nearly 20 years since I painted in oils! My goodness, I miss it, despite the fun I have with other media. I remember too, that these were painted after seeing some mid 1990s paintings of dogs done by David Hockney. No, don’t go and compare mine with his! Don’t!

Oh, damn.

You will.

Well, anyway, I loved it that he chose such a domestic subject as a dachshund and honoured it in oils. And I enjoyed capturing our beloved dog in oils in the same way that I had painted my friends in London. Note that the sleeping version is more ‘finished’ and see if you can work out why… Never work with children or animals they used to say in the theatre, but in my experience, they are some of the most rewarding to work with.

Red Giddy

Red Giddy

Blue Giddy

Blue Giddy

These two sketches are painted on wooden trays purloined from the science room of the old Banyule High School which was awaiting demolition at the time that I worked for Greening Australia in a renovated wing. The lip of the trays forms the frame of the paintings; a cheap alternative to proper framing. It’s time I took them to be framed properly. They remind me of the dog and the time.

And it’s also time I found a way to paint again.