Transform Your Passion for Animals into Expressive Pastel Portraits
Struggling to capture a pet's unique personality in your artwork?
Join this joyful journey to create vibrant portraits that bring their spirit to life!
Balancing character with likeness in pet portraits presents a unique artistic challenge.
Artists often struggle between creating technically accurate but lifeless work, or expressive paintings that lose the subject's identity.
If you've ever felt this tension, my Painterly Pet Mini Course offers the perfect balance.
Through practical lessons on reference evaluation, design fundamentals, and varied techniques for both light and dark surfaces,
you'll learn to build portraits layer by layer that maintain freshness while achieving convincing form.
This approach works for all pets—from furry companions to exotic animals
giving you versatile skills to create keepsakes of your own pets or commissioned portraits for others!
It's time to develop a painterly approach that honors both likeness and character in your animal portraits.
Evaluate Reference Photos
Learn to select and create quality reference materials that showcase your subject's unique personality and provide the perfect foundation for successful portraits.
Develop Painterly Techniques
Follow Alain's step-by-step guidance to maintain fresh, expressive marks while building convincing form and bringing your pet portraits to life.
Capture Convincing Likenesses
Discover the essential balance between physical accuracy and character expression, creating portraits that truly reflect the spirit of the animals you paint.
Imagine Pet Portraits That Capture Likeness & Spirit
Bringing Each Animal's Personality To Life
Signing up for this mini course will transform your approach to pet portraiture. I'll guide you through techniques to move beyond stiff, photographic renderings to create loose, expressive portraits that truly celebrate the character of your animal subjects while maintaining their essential likeness.
Best part? You'll have so much fun along the way!
Alain Picard
"Alain is not only a gifted painter but a gifted instructor and teaches in a clear and effective manner."
- Jan
The Painterly Pet
What's Inside
LESSON 1: Evaluate Your Reference
Evaluate your reference photographs so that you can create and select good reference for your animal portraits. We'll explore what to look for and avoid in your reference photographs.
LESSON 2: Design Your Pet Portrait
Design your portrait with style using thumbnails and preliminary sketches! Learn to refine your composition as you simplify values and clarify shapes to create a strong foundation for your painting.
LESSON 3: The Painterly Dog Portrait
It's time to develop a loose painterly portrait that captures your pet's unique character and personality! Starting with basic value shapes, you'll build layers of soft pastels while maintaining freshness in your marks. We'll focus on how to add telling details that make your pet unique without overworking your painting.
LESSON 4: The Exotic Painterly Portrait
Create an exotic painterly portrait on a dark-toned surface using fresh color and bold marks! You'll discover how to reverse your working methods to pull light out of darkness, using vibrant colors and expressive mark-making to bring exotic pets to life. This technique offers exciting possibilities for creating dramatic, colorful portraits with immediate impact.
Got Questions?
Do I need any prior experience?
How long is the course?
What materials will I need?
Will my access ever expire?
Have More Questions?
“Alain’s approach to painting and his teaching style will help anyone improve their painting."
- Carol
AS FEATURED IN
