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"Portraits of Labrador
retrievers "
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| Here are a few portraits of black, white or
chocolate Labrador retrievers. These Labradors have their own
stories. I 'm sure you will love them |
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Portrait
of my black Labrador retriever
Drakkar, this black Labrador retriever, was my pet dog from
1988 to 2000. When he was young, we had a great time together
in pheasant shooting parties. But he was a terrible poacher,
retrieving all the game birds of the line in front of me.
As he grew older, he turned out to be a great pointing dog and
we both became woodcock addicts. Hunting very quietly, just
looking for this mythical bird. I was so proud of my gundog
that I wrote many articles for magazines, where Drakkar was
the hero.
It was normal to want to keep a portrait of this great friend,
but the main obstacle was the fact that he was photo shy. As
soon as I had a camera in my hands, he would take ridiculous
poses. To get this snapshot, I adjusted my camera while he was
sleeping in the sun sun and surprised him just as he was waking
up. |
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The greatest difficulty then, was to
paint a black dog. In watercolor, if you use black paint, it
gives the illusion of a hole in the picture. The solution is
to mix a dark blue, a red and a yellow to get a beautiful black.
This black will have violet-blue, brown-red or dark-green highlights,
depending on the ratio of each different color. I painted Drakkar
hair by hair, using the smallest paint-brush, a 3/0. As this
portrait is about 35x45 cm, it tooks me about three weeks to
achieve it.
I intended to paint Drakkar lying like
a sphinx, with his paws in front of him. But, when the head
was painted, I discovered that my paper was too small for his
paws.
Is'nt it stupid ?
Error
of the youth. As a painter, I was about two years old, at that
time. |
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My
white Labrador retriever: "Porte-Plume"
When Drakkar became too old to hunt our
mythical woodcocks a whole day , I visited my friend
Frederique de Bellecisze who is an excellent Labrador retriever breeder.
Since a painter is always looking for a dime to make a dollar, I didn't
have enough money to purchase one of her lab pups. But since Frederique
has always been one of my real fans, we made an exchange. For the
price of my yellow Labrador retriever, she gave me a commission to
paint a portrait of her daughter's dogs: two border collies. You have
a photo of this portrait at the bottom of this page.
ThatÕs how I bought: Porte-Plume.
"Porte"= to carry and "Plume"= feather or pen
In French, "Porte-plume" means both "drawing pen"
and "bird-retriever" ..
A great name for a Labrador, isn't it ?
When he was young, "Plume" was so white, that he was like
silver shining. He just had very light golden reflects at the end
of his tail, like a paint brush diped in an ink-pot.
He was a very young pup, three months old, when I first brought him
hunting in the marshes. |
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I
remember a shooting party at that time.
A friend of mine asked me to find one of his snipes in a jungle
of reeds. Drakkar, my old black Labrador retriever, looked 4-month
old "Porte-Plume" in the eye, and said :
- "Now, look carefully, pup, this is how the job is done".
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Plume sat on his tail and watched his teacher at work. Drakkar
looked at the place where my friend was standing, and started
a large circle around him, nose up to catch the wind. All of
a sudden, he caught a scent, turned his head towards this scent,
crawled 2 or 3 meters
very slowly and pointed, as still as a marble
statue.
Then, Plume got
up on his paws, followed the exact course of his teacher, paw
by paw, step by step. He tried to catch the scent at the same
place where Drakkar had caught it, turned left, crawling towards
his master. As he was a pup, he crawled right under Drakkar's
belly , till his head was under his teacher's one.
With a flick of
his head he pushed up Drakkar's nose to take his place. Suddenly,
he caught the scent, his whole body became rigid and he pointed,
holding the pose, straight as a wooden beam. After a short while,
Plume suddenly charged to get the dead bird. He was so proud-looking,
retrieving his snipe, head and tail up to show it to everyone
of us ! |
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I
painted a portrait of Porte-Plume with his first snipe at the age
of 3 months and 4 years later, this
new portrait of my Labrador on the red checkered armchair,
If you are a painter, you can imagine the time it took me to paint
these red lines and checks in watercolor ! And then to blur and darken
it, to give this depth to the painting.
From the Home page, you will find a link to the comic strips showing
my very young Labrador "Porte-Plume" hunting woodcocks.
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Here
is the last portrait of my white labrador painted in 2005.
He is paying
with his toys and ask me to play with him.
It's the most uncredible detailed painting.
(this photo is not so good) I 'll try to enhance it. I
showed the work in progress, step by step, in the French
pages, but didn't translated it yet.
You
can have a look there.
At his feet, you have a plush labrador. It was rather
hard to paint the matter of its fur, but I love the results. |
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Portrait of a Chocolate
Labrador Retriever
I only painted chocolate Labradors twice. Both were for the same client.
The first one was a portrait with his grandchildren playing with their
pet, the second one was this portrait of his wife's daughter.
It was supposed to be a graphite pencil drawing, but I changed the
commission for a watercolour portrait. Behind this young lady, I intended
to have a dark brown background in the same shade as the chocolate
Labrador's coat. Then her hair would have nearly blended in the background...
But I soon realized that the darker the background, the paler her
face became. So the final painting is a compromise. I think it could
have been an interesting idea for an ink portrait. Later perhap's
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Labradors Retrievers in my dogs paintings
WeÕve just seen some of my Labrador
portraits. Now here are a few Labrador retrievers in my dog
paintings. They are featured in a decor, representing their
masters's hobby. To understand why I created these paintings,
I recommend that you follow the "guided tour" and
read my comments for each one. It' s fun most of the time.
You may also jump directly to these page, by clicking on the
picture
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Cliquez sur le drapeau,
pour accéder à la version française du
Musée du Chien
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| New Lab illustrated stories |
| 1) The last Hunt
of the season |
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| 2) The Retriever
and the Pointer |
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| Link your Labrador website to The Dog
Museum |
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