A little dachshund named Phoebe

My mother-in-law (this one) requested a portrait of her little dachshund Phoebe as her Christmas gift and, because I am not actually the worst daughter-in-law, here is what I made her!

It began, as all good things do, with some photo reference. Using my Cintiq, I digitally traced Phoebe in Photoshop.

Then held my oval picture frame (more on that later) up to my monitor to size the tracing to fit in it perfectly. Once I'd established that, I then RE-traced the digital tracing onto printer paper that I held up to my screen, and then.... RE-re-traced that tracing onto some thick, nice watercolor paper using my lightbox. AND THEN I PAINTED.

This was my first painting this year, I think?? Aside from painting details on my Louvre crown, I mean. But those were just simple, single-colored line strokes. This was my first painting-painting of the year and I was honestly hella anxious about busting out the watercolors so I kept procrastinating on this project until basically the last possible minute. As ever, I wish I could paint better than I can, but I did a Good Enough Job to get'er done!

Once Phoebe was all painted and cut out, I had to find a good background paper for her. My paper collection is robust, so this takes lots of practice time trying out different samples.

Personally, I liked the yellow one with skinny white/gold diamonds on it (bottom left), but the pinkish one with golden cursive on it just felt more like my MiL's vibe so I went with that one.

This picture frame, I got it at Goodwill for $1.99!

My eternal struggle with these shiny multimedia pieces is that they're so hard for me to photograph accurately. Like, I dunno. Look at my pictures and then pretend they look between 10-30% better in real life.

Then I got this bad boy (girl?) all packaged up and shipped off to England sometime last week, I think! There's a chance it actually arrives before Christmas. Cross your fingers for me!