Happy Easter To All

Wishing all of you guys a terrific Easter. The truth is that we are not terribly religious at my house, but I do love Easter and I love spring. For me I am reminded of childhood memories and all of the fun and silly things that American consumerism brings to the holiday.... Easter dresses and egg hunts and all of that pastel hued goodness.  I remember picking roses at my Gan Gan's house on Easter Sunday.  Since I am not a person of traditional faith you may think that I will be missing out on the big important messages that so many will rise early to hear tomorrow and yet I will be spending the day off-line with my family & friends  and I will be celebrating spring and celebrating new beginnings.  I hope you get to enjoy the holiday exactly how you want to as well!

"Big Tommy"
© rebecca collins

"Atticus"
© rebecca collins

My Artist Pals

My Artist Pals at Pinterest

 My Artist Pals:
The other day I started a board on Pinterest to start adding my artist friends to. In the old days we all made good use of blog rolls, and links on our websites to our pals. Cross linking helps your friends rank well in the engines, however these days I think that very few people actually click around a new site they discover in hopes of finding cool links to other fun sites. They do however use the heck out of Pinterest.  Please check out my friends and if you like their work then click through to their sites.


Living the Creative Life:
I am very proud to know a lot of really talented people, both on-line and off. In the last five years or so my husband and I have been very focused on expanding our creative communities here in Dallas. I think often my family tends to define us as the odd "Aunt and Uncle" without any children. I suppose having not created any humans does set us apart from our siblings however we are very focused every day of our lives on creativity and on creating, we just skipped the whole part about creating kids. Art fills us up and we never regret our choices.

My Best Artist Pal:
My very best artist pal is indeed my husband Dan Collins. He has a painting and printing background but  he is really a Poet. He has been watching the mail this last month for a package from a publisher ... it came this week! He has been included in a terrific chapbook by Naugatuck River Review. You can purchase a copy for only $10 on-line at their site. 
There are some really terrific poems in the book and the cover is very lovely.

Pet Portraits From Snapshots

Before & After
© rebecca collins / artpaw.com
See Full Proofing Set.

Working from ordinary snapshots is fun and yet challenging. Sometimes clients send in photos that tell a great story and yet they may be rather lacking in detail, or low in resolution. One recent client sent me several shots of his German Short hair Pointer, all of them full body action shots. He indicated he could send more pics if needed. Instead of asking for images with greater detail I chose to work with one of the images he sent because I sensed that he wanted me to paint his pup in action. I really loved the ears flying in the wind, and while I had to paint in some eye highlights to indicate that they were even there, I feel the overall story with this project is more important than a classic head & shoulder formal portrait where every whisker shows.

© rebecca collins / artpaw.com

Original snapshot