Trina’s Stanley & Mercedes

Trina writes:

A friend’s husband asked me to produce a picture of his wife and dog.
This is the type of request that I’d normally politely decline and that I’ve managed to avoid through out my career. But I know Mercedes likes my style and has bought several prints of my work as gifts for friends plus I also LOVE drawing dogs. And Mark made it very clear he didn’t want a portrait just a “sense” of his wife and dog in my style.

I submitted three ideas – and by chance they were each in different seasons – Mark then asked me to do a set of four through the seasons so the scale of the job quadrupled making it a much more interesting project.

It gave me the opportunity to play around more with scale and composition and viewpoints.
They spend a lot of time in Norfolk and so the summer image is set on the beach there.

The only downside of the project was while I was working on it I had to avoid meeting up with Mercedes and Stanley, for our occasional walk and a coffee, as I hated the idea of having a secret even if it was a nice one!