Flash Back Friday / A Few Felines

Here at Art Paw we seem to do twice as many pup portrait as cat portraits. I really do adore kitties and I was going  through old photos this week and I have a few felines from my past to share with you guys today.

Me and Bob at White Rock Lake
Bob was a boy friend's cat. I was in my late 20's here.

Me and my First Cat Juno
I was in my early teens here

Sweet Phoebe lived to be 22

Juno liked to jump up high.

Ok ....  so I want to do more Cat Portraits this month!

If you are a cat lover you can use

promo code: juno to save $50 on any portrait.

CLICK HERE to order a cat pet portrait today.

A Side Note:  I had this post written yesterday and ready to post. This morning I heard from a past client that manages a Veterinary hospital in North Carolina and they want to display some of my Cat art prints in their feline exam room. That is pretty exciting news and very timely. My partner has been urging me to team up with more clinics this year to display my work. How odd that the universe will provide you with so much synchronicity when you least expect it.

Flash Back Friday / Vintage Christmas

My Mom / Sandra Lansdowne 1950's

I wonder if this was the robe from a holiday story told over and over again. One year when my parents were first married my Mom was needling my Dad about what he got her for Christmas. They were driving back home from dinner and she was guessing and finally my Dad snapped at her "quit asking I am not going to tell you that I got you a robe for Christmas!". She got very quiet, and he did not know at first that he had spilled the beans. I love that story. She often got a robe at Christmas when we were kids, probably a repeat gift bought with warm memories of one of their early holidays together.

My Mom / Sandra Lansdowne 1950's

 I love this picture of my Mom, she reminds me so much of my old assistant Lola Cash. Something about the tilt of her head and her smile, and of course her waif like figure.

Mom with packages

Me and my brother Phil

No wonder I like aluminum trees so much, they really were abundant in my childhood. I love how I have so many pretty black and white pics of Mom posing with wrapped presents in the 50's and then boom, the 60's come along, living color,  and it is all bout the kids and posing with unwrapped presents. Yes we were rather spoiled.  I still have the clown doll on that table.

Flash Back Friday / My Greeting Card Days

Back in the Mid 1990's I was working full time as an independent greeting card designer. Each year I would go to the National Stationery show in New York.  Those were fun days. One of my best pals at the time was also a card designer and we both worked constantly. I learned a lot about design, production and marketing during those days.  I also learned that I could work alone in a business and yet still figure out a way to have collaborators and co-workers beyond the confines of my home office.

This was our first New York show. I had my first Paper Chase order that year and had to come home and figure out production very quickly. Paper Chase is a chain stationery store in England and they would order several dozen designs and within each style would be a required quantity of like one dozen - dozen, so literally hundreds of cards.  A Paper Chase order would make my year.

Notice the card board display! It was back in the day of recycled everything and brown kraft paper was very in. We left our display behind and only had to pack our card decks.

Skinny girl in vintage suit, showing off legs! I was in my early 30's.  This is Michael, he was my mentor and best friend. It was during a press check with him late one evening that I ran into my husband Dan again, and we reconnected after having dated briefly in college. Michael also gave me my very first employee and current employee Lola. She had worked for him when he ran and owned a gift shop here in Dallas.

This is Mark, he is an artist that showed with us and he later became one of our card reps. I think this was our 2nd year at the show. The following year we had a bigger space and some stunning shear aqua fabric as a back drop. The display boards above are made of metal flashing, black coroplast, and cardboard.  The following year we used translucent coroplast and it was very cool looking.

Flash Back Friday/ Vintage Creative Toys

Lately I have been feeling just a wee bit out of sorts creatively. I have not really been wanting to do mosaics at night and when I am not at my desk working on pet portraits I feel ... well sort of bored. Boredom is not something I usually have much time for in life, or much patience for. Had lunch with a good friend last week and she was telling me a story about a kid in her world getting their hands on a vintage spirograph kit. That conversation got me thinking about all of the cool creative toys we played with as kids.

This post is for summer fun and all the groovy things we did to beat boredom as children....
Spirograph

pic from Robert Donovan Flickr

pic by Ariane Colenbrander

Creepy Crawlers

from : Treasures From Paul's Basement

 

 

Lite Brite

from Crysti

Macrame

From Scott Beale

Etch A Sketch ... lol ... a precursor to my wacom tablet

From tea drinker

Silly Putty ... our first image transfer tool

from jagrap

Flash Back friday/ My Hubby

Looking at some scans of old pics today. These are shots of my husband Dan from many many years ago, he is still just as cute. I love faded snapshots.

Dan with his first Fox Terrier. 

Ciggies & Coffee ... he still drinks coffee but no longer smokes ( thank goodness).

I think this is when he was going to school in New York.

Flashback Friday/ Old Web Design

I always tell artists that are thinking about setting up a site that they just have to dive in and do it. If they can afford to throw money at it and hire a pro to help them all the better. If you wait until all of your photographs are perfect or until you have a chunk of time to focus on it, well you will never get it done.

5 Things to keep in mind when starting your very first website:

• Your first site is going to suck compared to the site you create 5 years from now, get over it.
• If you do it yourself there will be a learning curve, just be patient.
• Websites are like hair-dos, we hope you are not still wearing your same hair from high school. Sites are meant to change over time.
• You might try using the templates and tools available through sites like wordpress.com and template monster.
• Avoid Comic Sans!!!! Don't believe me ... see my first site design below.... ugh.

Jan. 2000

I started Art Paw in 1998, my first site happened in 1999, and this screen shot, taken from the internet archive is from Jan. 2000.  How many things did I do here that I now hate ...hmmmm well to start with comics sans font and dark text on dark color. The sweet boy shown on the page was not a mistake ... that is my Atticus.

June 2000

 Looks like I gave my self a face-lift in the summer of 2000, lightened things up, but still had Comic Sans and no real logo. Sometimes images don't display right with the archive tool so that is what the blank spots are about.

December 2000

By December of 2000 things were starting to take shape and I ditched the Comic Sans, designed a logo and got my main menu over to the left which was becoming the standard placement in web design. Wow, 2 major design changes in one year.  I did like playing with web design back then.

March 2007

The screen shot above is from 07, and I had a reworked logo that I am still using today, a green striped background that I used for many years, and you can not tell from this shot as it did not display properly but the menu to the left was actually a groovy fly-out menu that looked better than the text links you see.  I added a search feature at the top right, got my toll-free number up there and a sitemap. I used this design for many years.

Nov. 2010

This is from November 2010, and other than the snowflake bling in the left menu this is pretty much my site today. Probably time for a design change again, but I really do not know when I will find the time, oh yea I said no excuses.  Yea, well..............

Flashback Friday/ My First Dog

Me and Pokey

This is me with my first pup Pokey, a sweet Beagle girl named after Pocahontas. I love these old printed snapshots, this one had a tear off portion for your wallet. Notice the dog house ... our pets lived in the backyard growing up, and that was normal back then.  Danny and I would never dream of leaving a pup outside overnight or even when we run to the grocery store. My Dad still has outside dogs, each to their own I guess, he treats them well and he sees after their vet needs, I know he really cares for them.  I am just so glad we were allowed to have pets growing up.

I love the double exposure shot above of Pokey & my Dad. Back in the old days of film you often would get to the end of the roll and if you kept shooting or there was a rewind mistake you could end up with a double exposure like the image above. Sometimes artsy photographers would shoot double exposures on purpose for interesting effects. If you do a google image search for Double Exposure Photography you will find some cool stuff. These days I do not know how you would be able to tell a real film double exposure from clever Photoshop effects, I suppose an old school photographer could tell the difference.

Flashback Friday/ Remember E-cards?

Are you old enough to remember E-cards? Or better yet, do you recall anything web-related prior to Facebook? This morning I was thinking about the many technologies and web related trends that I have taken part in over the years as a result of my commitment to Art Paw.  E-cards were fun and yet rather time consuming to create. A long long time ago ... way before social media, web savvy businesses would offer free e-cards as a way to help their site traffic and give folks a reason to keep coming back. Below is a sample of some of the e-cards we offered.  The first image, top row is the very first digital painting I ever created of Atticus. We created e-cards for Christmas, Valentines day, Howl-o-ween, you name it, we had it.

Art Paw Screen Shot June 2002
taken using way-back machine

Art Paw Screen Shot June 2003
taken using way-back machine

I googled e-cards and discovered that some of the businesses and sites that were all about e-cards are still on-line and still serving up cards. Then I tried to find web articles about the decline of e-card usage. There was very little info on the topic, proving that once a trend dies on-line it dies with a whisper. One article of note is by Heather Dougherty called "Social networks displacing e-cards"... it is from Feb. 25, 2010.

Flashback Friday / Atticus

Thinking about Atticus today. He was our first Scottie and the inspiration for Art Paw.  He was an only dog before Nessie came along and in those early years we took him everywhere with us.  He was one of the few dogs that we were able to have under total voice control and so he was actually allowed off-leash in some places. The image above was take at Barton Springs in Austin Texas. In looking for images today I found a lot of burned cds with the words "pics" scrawled on them. It made me realize I am way over due for cd burning. If my current computers died tomorrow we would loose a lot of photos of our current pups. 

Back up and burn your photos! They are with us such a short time. Be sure and preserve your memories.  I can not tell you how many memorial pet portrait projects I have done from photographs that were like the "one and only" photo people could find. So I guess my 2nd suggestion would be go out and shoot some more photos this weekend of your fur-kids, I think I am going to.

Flash Back Friday / Old Employers

 

A friend I worked with in college back in the 80's sent me an e-mail last week with pages from a 1934 Wards Catalog. He and I worked together at Montgomery Wards in Denton Texas while going to school.  Before posting the images above I went on a search for the images on-line so I could do a proper credit link. I think they came from this post: http://www.shangralafamilyfun.com/wishbook.html.  I also found a really cool site called wishbookweb.com that contains pics from many old Department store catalogs.

My Old Employers:
Retail ... I am out of it however my first and last job outside of my home studio were in retail. I worked in Juniors clothing at Wards, did visual merchandising for Neiman Marcus, worked at a small pet boutique selling gourmet biscuits, had a brief stint at a one hour photo processing store, I worked at Macy's, and was a stock and display manager at the Container Store for about 5 years. I learned a lot about customer service during my 2 decades of retail work, and I learned a lot about selling, both through developing people skills and through the art of presentation.  I know I would not be as successful today in my art career if I had not paid my dues, standing on my feet for long hours selling other people's product. I know so many artists that are shy about selling their work. Some are scared to succeed in my opinion, and will not do the work they need to do to market themselves. I work really hard at marketing because I would much rather sell my own artwork than other people's product and with a fine arts degree those are really my 2 options. I have been self employed for over 15 years now.  I seldom look back.

Flashback Friday / Old Pics

Not much to post about today. Feeling kind of sick, getting over a head cold. Monday I need to sit down with all the pending projects and place some folks on the calendar.  There are also a few projects needing design tweaks and I will get to those very soon. You guys have a great weekend.

This is me from my high school days.
I miss that car.... a 1972 Cougar Convertible

The book I have my hands on looks way too cool, the hair cut not so much.
I love old children's books from the 60's

Art from childhood. My Grandmother saved a huge stack if drawings that I did when I visited her as a child and she gave them to me when I was in my 30's. I am really glad she hung on to them.

Flashback Friday

I have always loved drawing. Posted below are some old drawings I did when I was a kid I think I was probably 9 when I did these since Jim Croce was alive and well at the time. I am going to start doing Flashback Friday posts and dig into my past a bit with old photos and old stories. Not all will be art related, but many will be since I have been doodling and making "pictures" since I was a very small child. Eventually I want to create a time-line of the business too, and revisit my early days at Art Paw. Feeling very nostalgic today for some reason.

Jim Croce, probably copied from an album cover 1972-ish

I guess I was bored with the class assignment,
I have no idea who was sitting in front of me

 

Flash Back Friday/ My Greeting Card Days

© rebecca lansdowne

Back in the mid 90's I worked as an independent hand made greeting card designer. The other day I found a stack of my old cards. For about 5 years I created a wide range of lines, working in a huge variety of themes. Each season we had to come up with new designs and new offerings for the Stationery show in New York.  That early business taught me a lot about production, I bought my first computer back then and I learned how to promote my work. I think my ability to work quickly with new ideas and design a dozen or more cards in one sitting has helped me with both my pet portraiture and my mosaic work. 

Sometimes I miss my card days, and when I think back it is more the camaraderie I had with other card designers that I miss most. My best friend at the time was a local card designer and we had a lot of fun working on our own lines with each other's help and support.  It was a friendship based on competition, mutual respect and constant support.

.............

I have been following a terrific blog by a handmade card artist named Kate Harper. She has great advice for card artists and artists in general. Check out Kate Harper's blog.

Flash Back Friday/ Self Portrait 1980

"Rebecca Lansdowne /  Self Portrait 1980"

© rebecca lansdowne

Lately I have been finding old artwork stuffed in drawers, and this little jewel was retrieved from the attic last week when I was looking for clip art books to loan to a friend.  This is from my senior year in high school, and yes that is me with my Farrah Fawcett hair under a black derby. I use to love to draw, and I had forgotten how much I liked shading. Somewhere in college I discovered "line" and I sort of abandoned realistic shading and tight renderings. Today I much prefer contour drawings and loose quick sketches.  

...........................

At 48 I find that it is fun to look back at where I have been with my art. I was 17 in the self portrait above and so I guess I can say I have been an artist for well over 31 years. One of my classmates asked my teacher once "when do you get to a place where you call yourself an artist". When I heard that question, I thought about it and realized I can not recall a time when I did not consider myself an artist.  Other roles in life such as wife, daughter, aunt, manager, student, teacher, well ...  those roles are less intuitive and take thoughtful concentrated effort, not that they are hard, but they do take a lot more thought and effort to be outside yourself a bit in order to show up well, and be truly giving.  The role of the artist is often one of pure, self-absorbed "id", and I guess that is why it is like breathing air for me.  I can not imagine life without art.

Who Who... Is a wise old owl?

Rebecca Lansdowne ( Age10 )
India Ink & Crayon

I guess today I am the wise old owl ... I just turned 46. Yay for me. For today's post I dug through an envelope of old drawings from childhood.

Early Dog Portraits...

Rebecca Lansdowne ( Age 7)
Pencil

Rebecca Lansdowne ( Age 7)
Pencil


Rebecca Lansdowne ( Age 10 )
India Ink & Crayon

India Ink & Crayon