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Ilaria, Linda, Tom, Thomasin, Marina and Chris--thank you! I really appreciate your kind words and your support.
Thomasin, I am interested to know you think I've described the weather. That is an unexpected factor, since I was concentrating on the colors and textures of the winter landscape. It was pure pleasure (in spite of the mud) painting the Pennsylvania woods in winter. I have been wanting to paint those colors and see if I could describe the structures of the trees and branches at different levels of distance.
It just so happened that the dog walked into a photo session and sat just like that, as if she were posing! I immediately realized her brindle coloring would work perfectly against the dead leaves in the setting, and that she provided a secondary focal point towards the right in the portrait. Fortuitous!
Just in case anyone is interested, I used a combination of sources: landscape painted on-site; head study from life, outside, in the same light; charcoal drawings of Mr. Weymouth from different directions; and digital photos of him and the setting.
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