Hello Jazza! First of all I want to thank you for making this challenge, it means a lot to me, and I wouldn't have made this piece if it wasn't for the theme of this challenge.

The picture:

I thought a lot about composition when I made this, but at the same time didn't want to change too much on it to keep it real. I used a gray theme to bring you into the atmosphere and mood I want to create.

Background

Its been really hard for me to make this since the story behind the painting is still fresh in mind although is a year ago now, but Im so glad I did it. The dog you can see in the picture was my best friend and although I was planning on making a happy picture of him and me bathing or in another cheerful setting, I ended up changing my mind.

You can see hes got a t-shirt wrapped around him, and thats because he had been sick for a while with painful rash he often scratched to the point of bleeding. He had gotten blind as you see from the blue eyes, then deaf and got some terrible back problems, but he was always happy and joyful. We had done all we could on helping him and it seemed to work, but when he suddenly got sick it wasn't anything we could do. The rash he had turned larger and aggressive and the worst days of my life began.
In short, this was my last real walk with him, and it lasted almost the entire day. I had taken him to the ocean to swim and on the way home he suddenly stopped and when I bowed down he sat down and just leaned against me. I had known deep inside that this couldn't last forever, but it was right then everything went up for me and its a moment I cherish, but it also stings harder then anything.

Me working on it: https://gyazo.com/f55c7f923d8e43fd01f7e2f280fe9cc1