The Painting of the "Homer Lisa"

Well, me and Missus have now calmed down from the shock of receiving the portrait which Dad got Missus for her birthday. Despite Dad being so ‘sneaky’ about things, I can now reveal the whole process from conception to completion of the ‘Homer Lisa’.

First of all, Dad had to find an artist. Luckily, he managed to track down the best ‘Dog Arteest’ there is: Ms. Aimée Hoover. You can check out her work here. Aimée develops her portraits using photographs provided by her clients.

To make sure that we got a portrait which Missus really liked, he had to let her in on the secret fairly early on. Then the search for the perfect picture for my portrait began. Missus and Dad scoured the thousands of photographs in my extensive pawfolio. Having short-listed about forty potential candidates, my humans finally narrowed it down to a shortlist of three. Here are the ones that made the final cut:

The first two were taken recently in Milan...

This one shows my boyish innocence.

This is my profile shot. I look a bit more macho in this one.

This final shot was taken way back in 2007 when we were living in China.

And here are a few that didn’t make the grade:

What’s wrong with this photo? It shows me in all my glory!



If you're going to commission a portrait, you might as well get a bit of colour into it! Right?

Oops! Ahem...

Anyway, back to the matter in hand. The photograph which became the ‘chosen one’ was...

Ta-da. My youthful picture from China.

Now to the real story. Here are the pictures which Aimée took as she developed her/my masterpiece...

As always, Aimée starts with a bare canvas.




Here she had her ‘grid’ set-up and you can see the faintest outline of yours truly.




A sketch of me.




The first-coat background went in next...




...and then I started to get some colour in my cheeks.

Surely this isn’t me? I’m not green!

To add insult to injury (or should that be the other way round?) Aimée then gave me two black eyes.

Finally, booti-ful goldilocks started to emerge.

Getting brighter...

...and brighter.

Wow! This really is me.

A bit more background...

...almost done. And...

Voila! The most booti-ful boy in the world! (According to Missus).

If you want to see the process above described by a true expert, take a look at Aimée’s blog here .

To finish, here’s a photograph of my portrait taking pride of place in my human’s new house. (More on the ‘new house’ thing later).

Mama mia. Bellissimo!