Little Dog, Big Presence: Painting Ruby

There's a particular kind of attention a dachshund gives you — head tilted back, eyes wide, ears caught mid-swing — like the whole world is happening two feet in front of her nose and she needs to know exactly what it is. That's the moment I wanted to catch with Ruby.

Ruby, Watercolor on Strathmore #500 Series

I painted her from above, looking down into that upturned face, which meant working with some serious foreshortening — her body stretching back and up into the frame, front paw planted, everything compressing toward those enormous, watchful eyes. It's a perspective that flattens a lot of dogs into odd shapes, but on a dachshund, with that long low body, it felt right. All that gold.

The palette did most of the storytelling. I leaned into warm yellows and burnt oranges for her coat, letting them granulate and pool the way watercolor does when you stop fighting it — those little blooms of pigment along her back and haunch aren't mistakes, they're the paint finding its own texture, and I've learned to let it. Her coat almost glows against the paper.

Underneath her, I dropped in a big, loose shadow in violet and teal — much cooler and more saturated than a "real" shadow would be, but it does two jobs at once: it grounds her on the page, and it gives the whole piece somewhere to rest. Without it, all that orange would just float. The ink spatter at the base was the last move, just to keep the energy from going too tidy.

Her eyes were the whole point, honestly. That ring of teal-gray around dark, alert pupils — I built those up slowly, layer by layer, because that's where a portrait like this either comes alive or doesn't. Everything else is architecture. The eyes are Ruby.

She's small. She knows it. She doesn't act like it. That's the dog I tried to paint.