This portrait was commissioned by Rena for her husband's birthday. She supplied lots of great photos of these three, but the challenge for me was to make each dog the right size relative to the others. I asked Rena to measure each dog's pupil distance -- just like the optician does during an eye exam -- and she and her kids were able to do it! These measurements were very helpful and after a couple of layout sketches we were able to decide on this composition. The other challenge was getting Buster's eyes the right colors. Australian shepherds have beautiful, but mismatched eyes. I also learned that some dogs -- like Tango in the middle -- have especially beautiful posture...and others -- like Cinnamon on the left -- are a bit slouchy!