My Barn Burned Down

Archive for the ‘Animal Rescue’ Category

Wishing everyone a happy, peaceful day and hope the New Year brings you every blessing!

Nice, quiet Christmas Day as we had our family get together last night. The kids were high energy, the food was great and all had a grand time.

Shipped off the last two pet portraits on Wednesday, finished in the nick of….

Bailey Jane, Bichon Frise puppy:

Bichon Frise Bailey Jane Pet Portrait

This was painted in oils (Genesis Heat Set Oils, praise Buddha, or it would never have gotten done in time!) on a 6 x 12 gallery wrapped canvas. The BEST part was the email from the puppy’s Mom when she received it:

Dear Elizabeth,

You captured the sweet spirit of Bailey Jane on canvas!  The painting is magnificent!  It looks just like her!  Thank you so much for painting her and for sending the painting to me on Christmas Eve morning!  There never was a more perfect Christmas Eve gift!  I love it!  I wish you the very best this coming year!  I hope that we can get together this summer when I bring Bailey Jane for a visit.

Then she emailed everyone a picture, then a second picture, with another note:

This photo shows the colors better.  I cropped it for a close up view.  I love it, love it, love it!  I was feeling tired before the package came!  Now I am back in the Christmas mood and can get busy cleaning!

THANK YOU!

It’s not that I am bragging, I’m sharing because (you other artists will understand), when it leaves my easel, the voice in my head is chanting, “It’s not very good, she’ll hate it.” So this really made my day, too!

German Shepherd Pet Portrait

A last minute portrait I rushed through but was pretty happy with, Kuro. I think he’s a German Shepherd mix. His facial bone structure was a challenge and I see why artists study anatomy. To ‘get it’ I had to visualize the underlying bones and eye sockets.  This one is a 9×12 in oils on gallery wrapped canvas.

My grandchildren all were over the moon with the paintings I did for them, which I posted previously. Funny, the one I thought would not care about it, Garrett, being only 3 years old, was AGOG. He opened his “Bear” painting (and he had his REAL “Bear” with him of course) and exclaimed, “OH, it looks just like BEAR!” Then he carried the painting around in a hug along with the real bear saying “Now I have two Bears!”. Adorable. Somebody said later, after mountains of gifts had been opened, that they thought the paintings were the big hit of the night. It made me realize that hand-made things from the heart really do touch the heart and gave me deep happiness that I could make them all happy for a moment.

Again, Merry Christmas!

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Cuy and Friend Pet Portrait

Peace on Earth? If dogs and cats can…..you’d think we could, too.

This is painted in Genesis Heat Set Oils (I LOVE these paints!) on 11 x 14 gallery wrapped canvas. Shipping off to customer this AM; only 3 more to finish before Monday! Already sent off my donations to Tara’s Babies and Garuda Aviary, so thank you to all my customers on behalf of the dogs and parrots! Happy Holidays, and Peace on Earth. Please.

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Boston Terrier Pet Portrait

As the holiday deadline bears down on us, I’m trying not to freak out. I’ve got a couple of pet portraits I MUST finish this week in order to varnish and ship on time and I keep reworking things to ‘get it perfect’. Of course, for a Virgo, “perfect” never comes so I end up (in my mind) with “good enough I guess”. But this guy, even though he’s just a 6×6 painting, seemed to take FOR-EV-ER. Paintings with many different colors are easier for me. Being able to show the form with shades of black and white are difficult. I had to go back to my pencil drawing training to even see it with my eyes. But I love Boston Terriers and hope I captured that WILD EYE look they get before they go out to destroy something.  As always, 30% of the proceeds from the sale of this painting will be donated to animal rescue work. You can bid now on this painting!

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WATCH THIS AND WEEP:

Inside Puppy Mill

Sorry to dampen the the sound of jingle bells, but when you see this, you’ll understand why educating America to what is going on is so important. Now, I think there are too many dogs already, as so many get put down daily in shelters due to overcrowding, and I think dog adoption and dog rescue is the heroic thing to do. However, people will continue to breed dogs for money, but why do they have to be cruel to dogs  in the process? A place can be clean, the dogs can be given room to move around, fed well (that would help the “product” don’t you think?).  Where is basic kindness in these people?

Anyway, please share this and get the word out. The US Humane Society is doing a campaign to stop puppy mills: please support them! There is a link to the Pledge on YouTube on the right, as well as a donation link.

Thank you and Merry Christmas to all – joy comes from helping others, so spread the joy!

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I actually have relatives that are out there in the stores today, Black Friday. I guess it might be worth the hassle to save a few bucks but when places like amazon.com have so many great deals, I just can’t imagine heading out in the fray. Of course I’m prejudiced in that my granddaughter and I have spent the last few weeks building our Christmas shopping sites for this internet marketing course we’re plowing through. Our main hub is at Christmas Shopping Made Easy and then it has about 7 baby sites linked to it with product specific pages. Lots of learning and work but we find it interesting and fun, and are hoping it makes a profit! Another aspect of the internet marketing course is using Squidoo, founded by marketing genius Seth Godin so we’ve begun building sites there as well. I built a Star Wars Toys “lens” (page) yesterday and have ideas for many more. As you can tell, I find the world of e-commerce fascinating. Will post all my Christmas gift paintings soon – 5 done and 2 still to go. Then the dogs!

After Christmas I plan to really promote my pet portrait business as well as build some pet related websites with a big chunk of proceeds donated to Tara’s Babies and Garuda Aviary. I know they are struggling in this economy to care for the dogs and parrots. I also have prints and cards available of my German Shepherd painting, and 100% of all of those proceeds go to the Mid-Atlantic German Shepherd Rescue.

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