Pieter Boel's Head of a Dog revisited

         This is reposted from April 2020. I can truthfully say, doing this helped me through lockdown.

 I finally started on a project I have been thinking about, for a long time. A year or so ago,I trained as a Peer Facilitator at Dulwich Picture Gallery, as part of a project called 'Together through Art,' which was targeted at Mental Health Service Users, in their 50s.

In the DPG collection of Old Master paintings is this Head of a dog by Flemish artist, Pieter Boel. I think it is an old dog. That makes it all the more poignant, for me. I have a lovely book of dog portraits by a favourite artist of my mother's called Cecil Aldin. He says always start with the eyes.
The blue cast is just the camera on my  phone.
When I was an Art Student at Middlesex University in the early 1980s, I went through a phase of making art about greyhounds.

It is nice to see my efforts win the supreme seal of approval.

As you do, I googled to see what was already happening in the world of Fine Art crochet. Check out this guy, Pat Ahern!  Amazing work!      https://www.facebook.com/padurn/

Also,check out  https://www.thisiscolossal.com/2011/04/jo-hamiltons-crochet-portraits/

I think he works completely freeform, without a support as such. That is somewhat hardcore, for me, so I am using a piece of old hessian (sackcloth) I had hanging around.

Doesn't look much at the moment,but hopefully, as time goes on, there will be progress...watch this space!

I think we are done now, pretty much. I've really enjoyed spending time with Pieter Boel's dog.

As he did, I suspect. But for different reasons.

Now we are done. I think.