Titan portrait in progress 10 - A well-loved toy

After I finished Titan’s paws, I drew the toy. The well-loved tug toy. 

Then I finished the shadows under the toy and paws on the fabric. Whenever a figure is resting on a surface in art, there will always be a shadow that "connects" them to the surface. Otherwise it will look like they are "pasted on" the surface, or sometimes floating above it.

I could have cleaned up the toy, but I thought it would be better to show that it was well-loved....yet another indication of the partnership Titan had with Alicia. A dog can’t play with a tug toy by himself.  In fact, they had just been playing with the toy when Alicia took the photo I used for this portrait.  If you missed the amazing story Alicia told me about that photo, here it is again (below).

Alicia wrote:

“The photo was taken in May 2024, at a Comfort Inn in Blacksburg, VA the night before an AKC Scentwork trial, the last for the season. I was hanging out on the bed playing with his tug, enjoying himself as you can see by the look on his face. The next day we were at a camp doing a master interior search when he got shocked by a wall outlet with a broken cover, he screamed and it dropped him to the ground and he didn’t move for what felt like a long time when he finally crawled to me. It was in the 3rd and final room of a Master level search which would have been his title. He was really shaken but rallied for me and we were able to do some exterior searches and buried that weekend and he was his happy self as long as we were not going into any buildings other than the hotel. It took several months of hard work to get him to not have an aversion to going into unfamiliar rooms as a result of the shock, during which time we also started the immune suppression to resolve the immunity issue he developed. He had a lot of health challenges with the treatment and we thought we were on our way back. The week before he died he earned his Master exterior title which left him only 1 leg short of earning his overall Masters Title, the leg we were missing was the last interior search we ever entered which was the day after that photo was taken.”

Portrait of Titan, in progress

(Goldgrove Irish War Cry CAX FCAT SWNE SWE SCM SEM SBM SHDN WAC RATN CGC TKN ATT NW1)

❤️  Commissioned by Alicia McCarthy. 

🎨 Prismacolor pencil on “Sky Grey” Canson Mi-Teintes paper, 16 x 20 inches.