clem pt. I

My dear friend had to put to sleep her 14 year old dog today. Of course, she is in keen pain, and she's withdrawing into herself and doesn't want to talk, so I am doing what I can for her and making her a present. When my sister's beloved Pansy died, I sent Ashley all sorts of presents: comforting books about grieving a pet, a photo album of the two of them and their time together. I also painted her a portrait. I've also painted living pets for family members, and I have done some memorial drawings of lost pets, and these things seem to mean a lot to the animals' people, so I thought I would do a portrait of Clementine for Jenny.

I sketched it out on a medium sized canvas (I think it's 16x20) imagining I would paint it like I did Pansy's, but something about that just felt wrong. I considered copic markers, but I don't know how they'll perform on canvas, I don't have much experience using them, and I don't have many colors. I thought about oil pastels, but they're messy and my set is packed in the garage somewhere.

After all this thought, I think I'm going to use Sharpie. I use Sharpie on top of acrylic to get precise details, so I am confident they'll do well on the medium and that I can use them well. It just feels more fitting, somehow, to render this portrait in strong, bold lines rather than soft, blended color. I think I will just use black, with maybe an understated wash on the background. (I probably will use paint for this, since I've never bled ink with alcohol before, and I don't want to fuck this up.) I did a really haphazard edit of the sketch on my phone for an idea of what I'm working towards.