Marquetry Dog Portrait

Last Christmas we did our usual gift exchange at work. I got my co-worker Ann Marie, and immediately knew what I wanted to do. She had this beautiful smart dog named Tank who was one of our office dogs and never left her side. I wanted to make a marquetry picture of him. 

I had a few pictures of him that she had shared with me over the years, and I thought this one would be a really nice one to do as a portrait. 

I printed the photo to the scale I wanted and traced the colour changes in his fur as best I could. I then traced those lines onto tracing paper to use as my template. 

This is what it looked like after I'd cut all the parts and set it into the background. I cover it all with tape as I go so no parts will fall out or move around, but it makes for a big surprise at the end when you take it all off and get to see how you've done! 

Luckily wood comes in tons of shades and textures of browns, so it wasn't too hard to find several different ones that would give him the definition I was looking for. The tricky part was getting each colour in the right place so it would have the right look. 

I was still learning how to cut so many different colours, so I didn't get my pieces perfectly tight. Luckily when you add glue all the pieces expand, so I didn't have any big gaps. 

Here he is just after being glued but before sanding and finishing. 

I always love how much richer the finish makes the piece look. 

Unfortunately Tank passed away about 6 months later. He is greatly missed by everyone at the office, and was such a wonderful big guy.