Brown and White Shih Tzu Portrait

This is a little custom shih tzu painting I finished a few days ago.  It's already on its way to Bankok, Thailand where the real little guy lives with his mom, who was visiting in the US and asked me to paint her little pup that she missed terribly while she was here. 

At present I'm working on a couple of paintings, one for a contest winner from the June photo-submission contest (the contest is on hold for now due to my huge workload), a Nova Scotia Duck-Tolling Retriever, which should be finished in a week or so more.  I'm also doing a formal painting of a show-groomed Yorkshire terrier, which is coming along nicely.  It's due the end of this week, so I don't have time for much of anything else.  Then I have four or five, I think it is, custom paintings that have to be done one after the other just as quickly as I can do them (it takes me about a week for each painting, unfortunately). 

Starting in the next few days, I'm going to try to start listing interim photos of my paintings in progress.  I've been shy about doing that until now, but I think it will help me and perhaps others.  It'll be good for me, I think, because I can perhaps see some method to my painting madness if I see some paintings in stages of completion.  We'll see how it goes.   Actually, I think my daughter, Lara, has already posted a few progress shots of the Toller mentioned above that I'm working on as I can squeeze it in. 

You will note on the progress photos that since these paintings are for the most part custom portraits and have to be very, very precise, that I draw a grid on the photo I work from and a corresponding one on my canvas.  It really helps me keep everything exactly where it ought to be.  I highly recommend it for portrait work.  I could work without the grids, I guess, but it saves me a huge amount of time.  Okay, back to the Yorkie now.