I was sitting on my patio in Florida at the beginning of the month on the kind of afternoon that makes you glad to be alive, having a great time painting a grisaille from a terrific photo my son had posted on Facebook of my granddog Jones, his beautiful bull mastiff. A grisaille is a monochromatic sketch in paint–an underpainting–and it gave me a lovely start for the small painting I wanted to give him and his wife as a gift. I packed it in my carry-on, brought it back to Boston to finish here and thoroughly enjoyed spending a few hours some days later painting the darks and lights that make up a face.

When Jones came to our house for Passover a couple of weeks later, I realized that my son had fooled around with that photo and “enhanced” the color. As I gave Jones a thorough scratch behind both his ears at once, I could see that he’s not quite as red as his photo—he’s a handsome black and tan!  Good thing oil paints are so forgiving…

Jones