Every best friend moves through the same six layers as a human portrait, built up over roughly two months: priming the canvas, a careful pencil drawing, a diluted underpainting to block in shadow shapes, a grisaille to resolve value and light, then two full-color painting stages — big-shape modeling, then fine detail — to capture the true depth of a coat, a coloring, an expression. The result isn't a print of a photo — it's an heirloom, painted by hand to outlast it.