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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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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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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Buddy on his ATV

Got to play Grandma last night with four of my six grandchildren, ages 9,9,5 and 3. I went to the store and got Xmas ornaments to paint and we had a blast. The  3 year old dips the brush in every color without rinsing in between and ends up with a gorgeous muddy purple that he thinks is da bomb. So it is. Then he squeezed gloppy glitter glue on the Xmas Tree and announced, “It looks like an octopus!” And it did. He very firmly announced he wanted to hang THAT one in his room! Such unbridled creativity and joy in what was created was a thing to behold. The 5 year old is, in fact, extremely talented artistically and blew through five ornaments (well done) to everyone else’s one. She has absolutely no low self-esteem issues and her announcement was something along the lines of being the best artist of everyone there. The two nine year olds were thrilled to learn a new technique of transferring an image from a printout reference photo to the painting surface (scribbling graphite to the back and making a transfer) and then made some wonderful paintings in that free, “the photo doesn’t have this but I want a tree THERE”, creative spirit children possess. I learned that Jack wants to be an architect (!yay!) and toiled away at a very detailed painting of his grandparents’ home.  Brooke, also 9, ended up with a beautiful waterfall painting that had fabulous balance of lights and darks. Kids do that naturally somehow. Was great fun and in another life I think I would have enjoyed being an art teacher. After painting ornaments, I took a photo printout of one of their friends’ dogs, Buddy, on the ATV and did this photo in kids tempera paints on photocopy paper. It was very liberating to paint like a kid again and hope to have many more sessions of it.

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Donation to www.magsr.org

FINALLY have finished this painting! I kept getting it to a point, then would mess it up and have to redo again. As always there are things I’d like to improve, but alas, the deadline has come to send it off to the fundraiser.

I really hope it brings in some dinero at the silent auction/BBQ for the Mid-Atlantic GermanShepherd Rescue.

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A Katrina Rescue

Today is a milestone … well, maybe a quarter milestone since the amount is small…but I set out to begin painting in order to help raise money to help save dogs lives and give abused parrots lifelong sanctuary. My first painting has sold and this morning I sent the funds straight to Tara’s Babies. What a happy day. It wasn’t much, but it’s a start and I know how much they are struggling to give these dogs a second chance. And that with more funds, more dogs could be saved. So quickly, back to the easel. I’ve got three paintings almost finished and they will go up on my eBay shop this weekend. And soon I’ll add a page here to take commissions for pet portraits you can commission.

Even if you don’t want to buy a painting, go to Tara’s Babies, and look at these faces and I dare you to try not to donate to help them.

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