Creepy Crawlers

I am starting a new series of digital bug paintings. This is a personal project and I am having fun playing with these colorful creepy crawlers. I hope to create a strong group of around 6 - 9 bug art images that I will be offering on-line in our Cafe Press gift shop. I have started today with a fellow I call Bernie the Beetle. You can buy a print of Bernie by clicking here. I'm not sure this will be everyone's cup of tea, but that's ok. I find that the work I do to please myself always helps me grow in my commercial work. I have always loved insects and I especially love dusty old books with hand tinted engravings of insects and flowers. I will be using both old engravings and photographs in these new pieces.

New Portraits

Today I finished a fun and bright portrait of a Great Dane named Olivia and a sweet little pup by the name of Lady.

These two girls were fun to work on. The dog days of summer are upon us and all I want to do is stay inside and work on commissions.

Fala Day Pics

As promised a few pics from Fala day last Saturday. My favorite of course is the first image of Big Tommy with his blue ribbon and acrylic trophy. As you can see in the pic his Da was very proud, and just like the proud parent of a two legged child Dan has the trophy on the mantel at home.

Tilly and Veronica Lake

Today I worked on Tilly. Miss Tilly has a Veronica Lake look going for her with only one eye showing beneath her long flowing locks.

Tilly's original snapshot was pretty good in that we could get a real sense of personality and character. It lacked a tad bit in detail and so I just painted in an abundance of texture and line. Tilly's human also was able to show us a variety of snaps taken inside and so we were able to get a real sense of her modern style and aesthetic sensibilities ( Tilly lounges on very cool furniture).

My next step is to play around with color and come up with some different color background options to show Tilly's human. Her proof should be on-line in just a couple of days.

Fala Day

We had a blast on Sunday at Fala Day. I will be posting some fun pics of this annual Scottie event soon.
Big Tommy won first place for tallest ears, we are very proud. Fala Day is put on by the terrific folks at North Texas Scottish Terrier Rescue. In true rescue spirit they have contests celebrating the quirks and imperfections that make our pets so dear to us. Other contest categories included longest tail, widest girth, shortest ears, longest beard, and of course best costume.

Both our sweet Ajax and Big Tommy are rescue boys from NTSR.

1,609 Served

In early 2001 Art Paw was one of the first on-line pet portrait studios to start offering on-line web proofing to their clients. We started our business in 1998 and for our first three years in business we proofed all of our clients via e-mail only. Just for grins today I did a quick search on my hardrive for html (web) pages with the word "proof" in them and found 1,609 page results. Zowie, dividing that number by 5 (years) I discovered that we are averaging around 321 portraits a year. The actual number could be a tad bit higher as we often return to e-mail proofing during the busy holidays.


One of these days I want to make myself a huge mural using small square thumbnails of all of the animals we have created portraits for. I think that a huge print of that size with that many animals would look lovely above my desk. I can just imagine sitting back with my assistant and trying to name all the different dogs and cats that would be represented in a giant mural like this. The conversation would be "no that is not Bella, that dog over there is Bella ... ok maybe that is Bella the terrier and that is Bella the poodle". I really do remember 98% of the animals names that we have created art for, and the only ones that are a little fuzzy in my brain are the very quick rush jobs.

It might be even better to make the mural out of ceramic tiles. That would be an expensive project, over 1600 ceramic tiles! Now if I can just find the time to create this tapestry of pets.


Web proofing is one of the perks when working with digital artists. We have the ability to show our clients a couple of different versions of their art before we print it. We can even make minor color changes to the work and reproof on request. Click here to view a few of our most recent client proofs. Some traditional portrait artists are even getting in on the proofing game and allowing their clients to see their art as it progresses. Check out Kathy Weller's blog to find a few of her pieces in progress.

Dog Wraps

This week I worked on 2 pups that were sporting lovely wraps. When photographing your dog take advantage of after bath towels, bedding and other groovy "wraps" to add texture and interest to your canine photography. After playing with Keyla and Lola I dug through my photos of Pixel that I shot in Feb. to find one where I had wrapped her up in my knit scarf. I played around this morning with her photo to add her to today's post on dog wraps.

5 down ... 9 to go

Well, I proofed 5 clients this week and I am so close to being caught up I can taste it. I am working on a good looking horse this evening, and I have one very large order that I have to start on soon for a patient local metroplex client.

Today I proofed Moses the tabby. Moses has a terrific in your face sort of glance. Cats are so much fun to work on. When a dog stares too directly at the camera it can sort of freak you out a little and make them look mean or threatening so I usually will rotate their heads in my art to sweeten up their demeanor. Cats on the other hand, well you sort of have to love their attitude and just go with it. This kitty looks sweet yet he is expecting something from the viewer ... a treat, a toy, I dunno?

Mr. Knuckle

Knuckle was a very fun project I worked on last week. The original photo was not bad at all. My only real challenge with the original snapshot was that one ear was not showing at all. I fixed that by duplicating the existing ear then flipped it, then I reduced it's size slightly, and warped it just a tiny bit to make it look different from the other ear. I also lifted and widened the eyes just a tad bit to sweeten Mr. Knuckle's expression a bit. This guy looks like a no-nonsense sort of chap and I really like this piece.

Mercy's Memorial

This morning I joined my assistant Allison and her Father in attending the public memorial service for a very special pup that Dallas residents have probably heard about by now. Mercy was the victim of a horrible animal abuse incident. After being set on fire and abandoned she was found by a good Samaritan and ended up in the hands of Operation Kindness, a terrific no-kill shelter. She received treatment and her caregivers were very hopeful that she might make it, but she passed to the rainbow bridge on Sunday evening April 23.

The turn out was amazing for this special service for Mercy and as I stood and listened to the different speakers there were sobs all around me, and I even saw a few grown men wiping their eyes. As outraged as we may all be by such evil acts we must pause and take some comfort in the knowledge that there are so many more good and decent people in the world than there are bad. It was an amazing thing to be around so many wonderful animal lovers mourning the loss of one ... mourning the loss of one sweet girl that they never even met. I am very grateful to Allison's Dad who asked her to take a break from work and join him for this special service.

Please visit Operation Kindness and read about Mercy's story. Her medical bills were quickly covered by the generous donations of hundreds of caring citizens, however you can still make a memorial donation in her name to help others animals that are in need.

Raining cats & dogs!

We are up to our elbows in dog and cat portraits this month. Yesterday we shipped some poker cats to Hong Kong. This was our first package to that country.
This week we are focused on a Weim, Irish Terrier, Black Lab, Yellow Labs, and I am starting on another painterly style cat duo.

I am very excited about the new cat art below of Sambo. This was a fun project that started with a pretty decent cat photograph. We are starting to get quite a few cat orders in and I met a really nice client over the weekend that is going to have me do all of her kittens and one pup. It is really fun when I get to meet our clients in person.

Adopt Autumn

Autumn is a 2-3 year old, very petite chow mix. This special girl was named Autumn because of her pretty dark red color...the color of autumn leaves. Local Dallas folks should check out this sweet, tiny little girl's bio at City Pet Rescue.

Stolen Smiles

My clients seem to think that I have a magic keyboard with unlimited possibility. The reality is some of the things they request are a little hard to deliver, but I do love a challenge. Tracy's dad wanted her to have an open mouth smile, however he was totally unable to provide me with any photos of her smiling. I can totally relate to this, once that camera comes out even the happiest dog on the planet can freeze up. So I decided to look through my files and borrow or steal a smile from another pup. I teased my client and said that if I could pull this off I would be discussing his project in the blog. So here is what I came up with, and is it Tracy's smile? I dunno, but without a photo of her smile this is the best I can do, and I think it is not too shabby. Tracy is the Wheaten terrier on the left.


So who's smile did I steal? I took Murph the Westie's mouth (below). I rotated, shortened and warped his tongue a bit so that it would look more natural on Tracy. Using my stylus I painted in new hair around her mouth to blend better and got rid of some of the green color that did not match from Murph's image. There was no smile button on my keyboard or smile "filter" in photoshop, so I sort of had to know what I was doing. I could not have done this 8 years ago when I started my business. My crazy clients push me to learn more and expand my skills, and I really get excited when I try something new like this.

Pet Birthday Cards

Art Paw has licensed a couple of Birthday cards to Home Veterinary Care. This is a terrific Mobile Pet Clinic in Northern Kentucky. We are always happy to work with vets, groomers and doggy daycare providers when it comes to licensing images for a small fee or creating custom graphics for their business.

You can send your pet's furry pals some of our Birthday cards on-line in our E-card section. Or you can also check out our printed doggy cards, and cat cards, after all everyone loves to receive mail. Our 5 x 7 full color greeting cards also look great matted and framed in simple 8 x 10 frames.

In the News

We are officially back from vacation and what a week this has been. We expanded our working space with a new building that was constructed on Thursday and Art Paw was also featured on the 6:00 NBC news just last night. I was interviewed here in my home-office and they shot me working on Auggie & Brutus. Allison was included in the story and she was working on Chip when they shot her.
Life is good and we are focused on about a dozen different portrait projects at the moment. I'll be posting about some of these new portraits in the coming week.

Working Vacation

We are on a "working vacation" this week so please forgive me if your e-mails and phone calls are returned a little slower than usual. The plan is to stay at home and work on some of those fun painting and home repair projects that we have been putting off. I will probably keep up with some of my blogging and the new photography hobby. Pixel gets her first haircut tonight so I'm sure there will need to be a puppy post or two.
We will be returning phone calls so anyone with a "pet portrait" emergency should feel free to call us and leave a message.

Pixel Sweet Pixel

Ok so here is yet another work of art featuring my very own Pixel. I am also working on custom portraits this week. I have around 6 painterly style projects in-house at the moment, and I'm trying hard to finalize those this week. This quick sketch of Pixel was created this morning in an effort to loosen up a bit.


I find the work I do for myself is pretty fast and easy. I tend to work hours upon hours, on client projects. This is sometimes due to low resolution digital files they send me and in these cases I spend several hours just optimizing the photo before I can even start to play with color. The main thing that takes time is just trying a variety of different layouts until I get things just right. I am reminded of a great quote by Michelangelo : "If people knew how hard I worked to get my mastery, it wouldn't seem so wonderful at all." - Michelangelo
I'm no Michelangelo, but when we think of digital art, I think his quote is a very good one.

The Dogster Blog

Special thanks to Joy at Dogster for featuring our new puzzles in her blog yesterday. If you have not stumbled across her blog yet be sure and check it out. Joy combines interesting dog news stories with fun and entertaining links to create a blog that has the quality of a first rate magazine.

Ron Howard's Aunt

More about the dog Museum:
So the gossip we heard regarding the amazing collection at the doggy museum is that the bulk of this woman's collection was donated to her by Ron Howard's Aunt. We admit that we have not done any extensive fact checking and instead we just choose to believe that Ron's Aunt may have been an eccentric dog lover that collected hundreds of different doggy collectibles. The wonderful thing about the collection is the amount of breeds covered. We saw oodles of poodles, fabulous frenchies, billions of bulldogs, dozens of doxies, well you get the idea.

Dog Museum

On the way back from Austin last week we stopped into the best antique mall on the planet. I had been there once before a few years ago. It is one of those large metal buildings with different booths set up inside. The coolest area of the mall is at the very back where the owner has set up her own private collection of doggy antiques and created a huge museum style display. I shot enough pics for a week's worth of posts so if you like antique dog-stuff check back in on the blog next week.

Below is an odd contraption that made me think of Hannibal Lector. It was quite scary looking until I realized it was some sort of mold. Everything was shot through glass display cases so please forgive the glare.



The one piece I wish was for sale is the Scottie Dog heater shown below. I don't think you will be seeing this on ebay!


In my next post I'll tell you the gossip on how this gal came into the bulk of her collection, it involves a movie star's aunt. Ha, what a cliff hanger.