I had to backtrack a little in my list of names to do this one. I received the okay from Ali Lopez to be a part of the Bear Portraits after I'd past his name on the list. Perhaps I could have waited till I got through the list alphabetically, but frankly, I was really jazzed to get the approval from a bear of colour to paint. At that point I'd asked quite a few, but only one guy had agreed. Anyway - along with Ali's approval, I also got his husband Ricky's and started with this picture of the two of them together. In time there will be individual paintings of each as well.

I had some fun with the colours; I thought the heavy use of the yellowish light was a neat effect. It's there in the original reference photo the painting is based on - but I pushed it. Also, I made some alterations to their shirts - Ricky was in something so dark (it may have been black) so I lightened it up to give it more shape. And Ali was wearing a shirt with a comic character imprinted on it, but I wanted to bring in more green to tie in with their bird, Gadget - so I gave him the green stripes. And since I did that, I also gave some stripes to Ricky which I felt tied the whole image together rather nicely, being such a long image as a whole.