Franken-dog!

I was asked to draw a lovely staffie/boxer cross called Cassie who sadly passed away recently. The customer Vicky provided a wide range of photographs but there was one in particular that she liked and wanted me to base the portrait from. It showed Cassie in a classic pose that captured her personality and included her feet, which was an important factor for Vicky.

As you can see, it's a wonderful expression but the photo itself is slightly washed out and not a true representation of Cassie's colouring. I decided I would have to do a little 'patching' so to speak, and take sections from the other photos to create a truer representation.

I used the above photo as my main reference for the colours and also took several of the facial features, such as the eyes and nose, from another provided image, then 'patched' these onto the original photo to create a more realistic version of Cassie's face, giving me more detail to work from. This is what I ended up with:

You can also see I have grafted on a new foot on the right as in the original photo, it was folded under and would have looked like a stump in the portrait! I couldn't help thinking of this new version of Cassie as "Franken-dog" every time I looked at it! 

Sometimes one photograph just isn't enough and I do have to refer to several, but being able to take parts from several images and patch them together is really helpful for me and I think that the final portrait turned out well for it; at least, I hope it did! 

**Artwork is Copyright of Emily Summers 2014. Please do not reproduce**