New Dog Puzzle Games

We have added some fun new puzzle games to the site, and will be adding more as time permits. For now we have created puzzles for Pugs , Boston Terriers and Labs . If you have a fast connection and time to play check them out.

Boston Terrier Art

Paris' human has decided on the yellow background proof and it looks really bright and fun printed up. I am sampling her with her second Boston portrait of her happy boy Julius. I think the yellow and red grounds will really pop together. These two pet portraits were a total blast to work on.

Dog Shelter Clip

A friend of mine is a devoted rescue worker and she sent me a link today to a very sad and sobering movie clip about one of hundreds of shelters in our country. The clip is not for everyone as it contains graphic images so watch at your own risk. It is very well done, and it will hopefully help make more people aware.

http://www.news-journal.com/news/content/news/slideshows/animals/index.html

The Color Green

Lately I have been craving the color green. Maybe it is because it is spring in Texas and our brown lawns are starting to show a hint of the hue beneath the dead straw of winter. When you are a child or maybe a young adult on a first date you often hear the question "what is your favorite color"? My favorite colors change all the time. Right now I can't get enough of green. It is showing up in dirty muddy shades in my current work. I know that some of my clients are living with acidic yellowish greens and all of the funky, dirty green shades I adore, but too often I think my greens are not pure enough for most people. My old assitant Matt called my favorite version of green "swampy". Oh well, as long as I keep offering folks a variety of proof samples I'll keep tossing in my favorite avocado shade from time to time. Shown below are Fannie and Paris. Fannie's humans chose an orange background on their art ( it was quite nice, but not green). Paris' human has not yet decided, and I'm crossing my fingers for the green version, although the blue coated Boston may be more flattering ... I dunno. Often it just depends on the color of their couch and, as a commercial artist I really do repsect that.

Pixel, yes again

Ok, another post about the puppy. What can I say, I am in love with this Scottie. This is the sweetest little girl. I played around tonight with a photo we took a few days ago. I like the yellow, red, blue and green. I started thinking about these colors on a walk the other day, I wanted to try and use basic childhood crayon colors. This did not turn out exactly how I imagined, but I like it a lot. Be sure and click the art to see the detail image.

Pixel

Well, we did it! We adopted a new Scottie puppy. Her name is Pixel and she is just as sweet as can be. Her full name is "Pixel Chiffon Pie". Dan came up with the absurd longer name and it makes us both laugh. She has been with us less than 48 hours and we are head over heels in love with her.

New Scottie Puppy

We may be getting a new Scottish Terrier puppy today. I plan to get totally caught up with portrait orders over the weekend so I can spend a few weeks focused on this new addition to the family. This is the perfect time of year to adopt, and one more Scottie will bring us up to 3 again. This seems to be the right amount of pups for us. I can not imagine more.

New Dog Photo Blog

I'm starting a new blog with my husband Dan. It is a dog photo blog , and we are sort of creating it as a hobby type of thing to encourage us to get out of the house with the camera. There are currently a few Scotties on it, however later this week I plan to start posting a few unknown dogs we have crossed paths with on our lake walks. It is great having a shared blog and project. I need to work on customizing the look of it, although the stark white & black layout is sort of clean. I love working with my client photos and yet it is really fun to be behind the lens myself and playing with images that will not become portraits, or product.

Check out this Pet Artist

I am always surfing the web to see what is going on out there in the world of pet portraits. You have to check out the work of Kathy Weller. When I first ran across her stuff I thought she was not really my cup of tea as her work is so very sweet. However the more I stumble across her portraits on the web the more I am charmed and amazed by them. They draw you in, and speak to an innocence in all of us. Her drawing and painting style is original, fresh and again, the only word for it is "charming". In reading her bio I also like the fact that she too has experience in publishing her own line of greeting cards. It takes a lot of grit to succeed in that industry so while her work may appear soft, sweet and whimsical, I have a feeling this talented woman probably has a backbone of steel and determination. Check out her Cafe Press Store for a sampling of her terrific portraits.


© 2006 Kathy Weller

Old Dogs

I adore older dogs. I met an old half blind stray this week. She was a very lovely old gal. A pal of mine dropped by needing to have a photo taken and a "found" sign created for a stray she rescued in her neighborhood. She called me the same evening with a very happy ending. She reunited the old girl with her humans. It took the better part of her day, and yet she was able to save this sweet girl from a miserable day at the pound and an uncertain fate. We learned that her name was" Washi" and her human was overjoyed to find her. Now if he will just go put a collar& tags on this old gal.

Portrait Process

Yesterday I posted a tiny little snippet on the site about my Pet Portrait Process. My adventures into pushing pixels around has evolved quite a bit over the years, and I now find myself less and less dependent on photoshop filters and more dependent on my Wacom tablet, and traditional drawing skills. I am starting to think more about how I do what I do and just what sets my work apart from the pack of growing digital animal artists. There is a lot of really terrific digital stuff out there and there is also a lot of crap.

A lot of people still don't really have their minds around just what digital fine art is. Too often, clients understand that our art is created on the computer however they do not understand the amount of time involved or that it is not done with one or two magic buttons on the keyboard. One of my goals in 06 is to better communicate just what digital art is, and that just like traditional art it can be regarded as "fine art", subject to the same criticisms and high praise. The spark that makes an oil painting dynamic is often the same sort of energy or spark that makes a digital piece of art fantastic. Just like traditional artists we rely on our ability to combine colors in a unique way and the basics of good composition. Just like traditional commercial artists we can also get caught up in the demands of providing a "service" or we can push ourselves further, trying new things, and experimenting during the slower seasons. Check out my short page on process

The Dallas Zoo

Dan & I went to the Dallas Zoo on Sunday and had a terrific time playing with our new camera. It seems to be spring here in Texas and the weather was perfect for this fun outing. We took the train down to the zoo and snapped up a bunch of pics before the battery died in the camera.


I have never been a huge zoo fan, as I always feel so sorry for the animals that seem cramped in small cages. I would have to say this was the best visit to a zoo I have had in a long time. Over 80% of the zoo animals did not seem cramped or stressed in their habitats. There were indeed many new "habitats" at the Dallas zoo. The chimps and tigers had a pretty fun place to hang, as did many of the smaller mammals such as the meerkats,and gibbons. Still cramped were the elephants, cheetahs, rhinos, and giraffes. We can only hope that plans are in the works for these guys to get a much better crib. Dan says he only feels sorry for the animals that are accustomed to large ranges to graze on and the predators such as the cats. Many of the smaller and more docile critters are probably cool with being in a place where they will not get eaten. After all,in the wild your whole goal is to find a place where the food is plentiful and your enemies are few.

Also new at the zoo were lots of bronze sculptures, and groovy art-signage like the lighted murals below.



Maybe next month we will try to visit Fort Worth to see what is new at their Zoo. I am posting a very quick filter driven sketch of a chimp we shot while playing around. The Chimps were very cool and laid back. They were grooming each other, napping and having a very lazy Sunday.

Oh Those Puppy Eyes

As a portrait artist my favorite aspect of my subjects is of course the eyes. Working from ordinary snapshots I often face challenges with glow eyes, and even non glow eyes that just don't quite show off how adorable a pup might be. A recent project that we will be finalizing this weekend is one such example. In the case of Miss Ella the original snapshot was very nice, and the eyes showed up very well, no glow eye issues at all. This Boston Terrier pup however had a very slight sleepy expression. I thought the true nature of this sweet girl was probably one of unending curiosity ( she is a terrier after all ), and so to achieve a little of that attitude I lifted or widened her eyes just a tad. See before & after below:





By lifting those eyelids up just a little bit I was able to give her a questioning glance that I think really makes this portrait special. In the final version Ella ended up with violet highlights on a fun painterly background of oranges and reds. This piece is a 34 x 34 inch canvas print and looks pretty cool with a larger than life Ella.

Year of the dog

Wow, 06 and it is year of the dog. Time to get back to blogging. The holiday season was amazing. Not only did we do over 100 portraits this last Christmas I also got to meet quite a few clients, even a few from out of town. I did not sleep much in December, and my own pups had a few less romps at the lake, although they did get their 2 walk-a-day routine every single day. All in all we had a lovely holiday.

I have tons of creative ideas for the new year and so little time to attack them all. I am planning to blog more, and to start discussing process more since my tech savy clients seem very interested in how we do what we do. I just spent some time updating our Mascott area to finally introduce our new Scottie dogs. After loosing two pups in 05 it was tough to even think about writing in the Mascot section. Fortunately, I was able to pass the buck, and Dan actually updated all the doggy bios for me. Check out our new kids: Mascotties

Nouveau-Vintage Chihuahua

Well it has been quiet awhile since my last post. We did take a short trip in June, but that is really no excuse. I have been pretty busy playing with new ideas this summer. Later this month we will have an on-line gallery show at Art Paw of my "Nouveau-Vintage" style, It is a new background technique I have adopted that is going to be very popular this Christmas. Here is one example of a sweet Chihuahua named Norman in this decorative new look.

"Floyd wants a biscuit"

In this art piece I decided to leave in the checker board tile floor so that I could enhance the fun angle this was shot at. I rotated Floyd's head so that he really has that "give me a treat" expression. All of the pet portrait work I do at Art Paw is created one at a time, with no magic formulas, and so decisions such as whether or not to leave in the background are always made on an individual basis depending on the photo in front of me. This client probably had no idea how cool her kitchen floor might end up looking on this piece. We combined a favorite background texture with the colorized floor to give it a much richer look. In the final version we will be cropping in a little closer to his face and changing the orange color to a deep red. This portrait was commissioned as a Birthday gift. Happy Birthday to Floyd's human!

Yet Another Cool Pug

Ok, this little Pug-Guy is just way too cute with his beenie "flying cap" on. His humans named him "Sirloin Theodore of Pugsylvania"... a.k.a "Teddy". I created a painterly style portrait of this black pug and tinted his coat blue. This is for another fun repeat client, and we love playing with her pups. I am away from my dog art this week as we have a large design project in house at the moment creating Warhol styled portraits of about 22 tech industry C.E.O.'s . I would love to drop some names, but it is much more important to respect their privacy, and to finish their project on time. I hope to be back to blogging more by the end of next week. By the end of next week I really want to put on my own "flying cap" and run with scissors, ah but that is for another blog.

Greta The Pug

Greta the Chinese Pug is a new commission I am working on. This adorable girl is a new favorite of mine.

I really like this fun green and red combo however I would suspect that the client will choose the more pleasing color combo of blues and purples. You never know though, people often surprise me and choose unusual crops and the odd choices that I sometimes make are occasionally favored over the more conservative picks.

Tax Time

Well it is tax week, and my creative energies are being thwarted by mountains of paper work. I have very little to talk about this week. I did do a couple of really cool cats last week named Max and Cooper. I combined the painterly style with the Warhol look for a favorite repeat client. Now I just need to get these felines in the mail. We ended up changing the bottom right panel to red and it worked out very nice. These kitties are really sweet and I love how different their personalities seem. The larger cat seems to have a "don't mess with me look, while the smaller kitty is waiting for something or someone to play with.
Below is a detail from the piece:

Missing my boy

Well it has been a week now since our boy left us for the rainbow bridge, doggy heaven, or whatever far off place good boys go when they die. I miss him. He was really much more like a cat than a dog in the way he loved. He had a sweet way of wrapping around you and snuggling for hours at night. I could go on and on rambling with sweet affection about the best boy ever. I will spare you and instead stick to the business of art and share with you the story of our beginning and Atti's hand, er paw in making Art Paw happen.
It was 1998 and Atticus was a very handsome one year old Scottie dog. I was coming to the end of my career as an independent greeting card publisher. I loved the card business but the industry was changing and becoming harder and harder for independent designers. One of my best pals was also a card designer at the time, and frustrated with sales he decided to create a few sure fire winners and asked all of his friends with dogs to come by his studio for a photo shoot. His next line for fall would have dog and cat photographs incorporated into his edgy card designs. He hired a terrific photographer (also a friend) named Kris Hundt to shoot our dogs. He ended up just using a Ridgeback & Chihuahua in his designs, however I did get my hands on Atticus' stunning photos. A few months later I scanned them into the computer and started playing late one night in photoshop. My husband Dan came in and sat down next to me and we were both taking turns at the mouse trying different filters and we ended up playing for around 6 hours that night on the very first Art Paw portrait. After we finished I said, "you know I could do this for other people". A brief job managing a biscuit bakery in the late 80's had taught me just how much people adored their pets, and I knew the business idea was solid. All I needed was a name. My last greeting card business had a very clever name, I was the "Cardiologist". It was a clever pun, however I had countless people in the gift industry ask me if I was really a doctor and then I was left explaining the pun, making them feel, well sort of stupid. I knew that naming the business was a very important step and that I could not be too clever or crazy with it. I longed to try something hip like jumping dog studios, barking pixels, or something even more abstract and funky. No, I knew I had to play it safe and I chose Art Paw. It was very short and sweet and would be easy for folks to remember. Now I needed a marketing plan. At first the plan was simple, I showed up for every outdoor dog event dragging my portfolio, fliers and Atticus along. Atticus loved being our Mascot and he adored outdoor publicity events. He knew when we started pulling out the tables and tent that it was time for fun, and he would stay close to the door as we loaded the Jeep, determined not to be left behind. Atticus was of course the subject matter of many of our first works, and we quickly started developing a Scottie following on the web. Through Art Paw Atticus has brought so many wonderful people into our lives and we are continually blessed by an abundance of deep friendships, laughter and love. He died last week at the age of 8. He had been bravely battling cancer for 6 months. He was a very social boy with tons of friends. He will be missed by many. Our very first portrait of Atti is shown below.