How Do You Create The Pet Portrait Eyes?
“They look so real” and “It looks as if his eyes are following me when I move to sit in his favorite chair” are some of the comments I’ve received on custom pet portraits or pet memorials over the years.
My creation process for animal eyes over time has gone from solid black fabric blobs to two layers of fabric, thread “eye sparkle,” and now painted eyes. Let me share some observations and tips from travelling the pet faces pathway.
Multi-Fabric Eyes Have More Life than Solid Colored Ones
In a previous post Making a Pet Portrait: Cooper’s Memorial Pillow, I mentioned how I use enlarged black and white copies of the reference photo as my patterns. For the eyes, in the beginning years I would cut out the whole eye, pin that to black fabric, and cut out an eye. I would either attach it with a blanket stitch (looks like a ladder with one pole missing) or zigzag stitches.
As you can see, from when I first began making portraits, the animal doesn’t have that extra spark with this technique.
Both the dairy cow and Beckett below have two-tone eyes. Adding fabric around the eyes also helps them stand out. If you look closely, the cow has a bit of eye sparkle done with a fabric marker.
Create The Animal’s Eyes First
The other thing I used to do was create the whole animal and then add the eyes. Looking back, that made it more challenging for folks to provide the best feedback to me when their beloved pet wasn’t looking at them. While I knew my vision and what it would look like, my client often couldn’t see it. Crumb, below, illustrates this point. It’s hard to give feedback on the face colors when there are no eyes as a reference point.
Right around this time was when I also started consistently adding eye sparkle, using thread and a zig-zag stitch. Again, Crumb shows you how it’s done.
Give Yourself the Gift of Grace in the Creation Process
My experience from 2017-2019 was that there were times when a pet’s eyes turned out well and there were times when they were simply outstanding. I wanted that outstanding level to be more frequent.
I learned that working on eyes in the morning produced the best results, as that’s my most productive time. I extended the process over a day or two if necessary to allow for observation and reflection time. Referring back to the original color photo on the computer for specific intricate details helped tremendously. And I learned to keep searching for the right eye color fabric because it’s here in my fabric stash somewhere.
Several of the artists I admire paint eyes and I thought about doing that for two years. Why so long? When I first started my business, it took me several years before I could accept the fact I was an artist. In my world, an artist had to have formal training, be able to draw from scratch and in a medium like paints, and, well…. the artist is/does list was very long. I kept thinking I had to go to a class with an expert animal fabric artist or painter to learn how to do painted eyes, and then COVID hit.
The #100DayProject, organized by Joanne Hawker, was a perfect opportunity to work on art for 100 days. While I made only 26 animals/animal eyes before gardening season started, I definitely developed confidence in painting eyes. Those creations rested at the top of my design wall for over a year.
This year I did the same challenge and allowed myself the grace to:
- Only work 20 minutes a day instead of finishing a whole animal each day
- Concentrate on the process, not the product
- Have fun, knowing I can do this.
So how did I do it, you ask? I traced the eye shape onto muslin fabric and with the photo on my left, I put small blobs of acrylic paint on a paper plate and slowly mixed them together, attempting to match the many colors in each eye. When it was close, I painted the part of the eye on the fabric that had that specific color. In some cases, I’d let it dry before adding the next color; in others I’d let it bleed into the bottom color a bit.
The trick for me was to keep walking away and coming back as that seemed to give me the best perspective on the detail coloration. Most of the painted eyes you see in this post took 2-3 days to come together, with maybe only 5-10 minutes each day. I think that had more to do with my slow developing confidence in the process, rather than anything else.
The Process That Works for You is the Right Way
This for me is the greatest learning from my 86 days (so far) of learning to paint eyes. I finished my first commission with painted eyes; I truly like how Deery and Fauna look.
I may use paint eyes from here on out; I may go with my tried and true fabric method instead. I likely will offer clients the option of fabric or paint.
The most important thing is that something I thought I couldn’t do (paint eyes), I discovered that yes, I can do it. The bonus is I really, really like what I’ve done.
Different techniques, different effects. What’s your preference?
Triple New News
There a number of new things that happened at The Quilted Jardin this month!
This blog post outlined the first bit of news – that folks now have an option of painted or fabric eyes for their pet portraits or memorials.
The online store launched on May 6th with the following collections:
- Pet Collection
- Veggie Collection
- On the Farm Collection (farm animals)
- Birds of a Feather Collection
- Special Pieces (covered bridges, custom sunflowers, and more)
The monthly drawing for choice of a free 8″x10″ nature-themed matted fabric picture or set of 3 nature-themed cards is beginning in June for email subscribers only.
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