Alan Tudyk was looking for something special. The prolific actor, star of “Resident Alien” as well as the voice of manic chicken Heihei in “Moana,” wanted to commission a painting to honor three beloved rescue dogs, but his visions tended to the fantastical. One idea, a portrait of his 14-year-old “terrier/poodle/chihuahua/goddess” mix Raisin holding a box of matches in front of a burning school, was rejected by a British pet portraitist: “We were told by his assistant he doesn’t do paintings like that,” Tudyk said. So he reached out to Jennifer Gennari, a painter who has been doing animal portraits in oil for nearly a decade, and she “embraced it,” Tudyk said.
