The painting is a combination of images from Ron and Woofie's home environment, plus images related to what I know about their lives; love of the desert, traveling, life in Seattle by the water. When I asked Ron for symbolic imagery about his life, he said "visualize and then manifest the vision". OK, I'm working on that. The painting is moving along but I have still not found the place for Ron in this painting. He had a place but it wasn't working. He will reappear, but I'll have to sit and stare at the painting and wait for it to speak to me about where Ron belongs. Maybe this is what "visualizing and manifesting the vision" is.
Often people are uncomfortable with a painting of themselves, so finding the perfect pose for the human which is still representational but not ego glorifying, is tricky. That is the biggest challenge of a portrait, to be a pleasing but not something that is too much about them, or they won't put it on the wall. So Woofie remains the primary subject, and Ron is still to come.
