New Skeleton Dog Mosaic project

skeleton dog mosaic wip
Originally uploaded by artpaw

This is a new mosaic I started last night in class. The entire surface will be covered in stained glass. This is a day of the dead piece in honor of my boy Atticus. I love the happy bright colors.

I have new custom pet portraits to post soon. Stay tuned dog art lovers.

Sadie The Cocker Spaniel

"Sadie" (See All Proofs)

This pretty Cocker Spaniel is shipping out today. The client asked for conservative or tame coloring on the coat and I proofed her with a variety of traditional looks.

About This Painterly Style Pet Portrait:
The original photograph was well focused and of a decent resolution. Challenges included glow eye and a rather serious facial expression. The bedding was also a bit busy. I fixed the eyes and rotated Sadie's head just a tad to make her expression and overall attitude just a wee bit more playful. By making the bedding a solid color I was able to calm down the pattern and keep it in the composition. The tennis ball was a fun element and I just bumped up the color there and added some brush strokes. I was pleased with how well the project printed as the various shades of blacks all seemed to show on the final print.

Mosaic Monday Has me Screaming/ in a good way

"The Scream" By Bill Blazak
© the artist

So I played around over at Flickr this morning and tried to find some new and exciting doggy mosaics to share. All the best new stuff over there seems to be by artists I have already featured. So I tried Etsy and fell in love with the work of Bill Blazak. From his profile: " I love working with glass for its translucency, texture, and how it changes with the light of the day. I am a PhD geneticist and glass provides for me a wonderful creative outlet."

Other work not to be missed is his Gold & Red Serpent . Check out his Etsy Shop Today.

New Bulldog Art

"Elly Mae" ( see all proofs)

I adore bulldogs. Over the years I have been lucky to create a lot of artwork for a wide variety of English Bulldogs. Once, a long time ago I was at a dog park and I got to play with a very young Bulldog puppy. It was only like 4 months old I think ... anyway from that moment on I have been hooked.

About the artwork:
This project moved along quickly. I fixed the glow eye and also rounded out her eyes just a tad, making them sag maybe 5% less and making them lift at the top by about 5%. I got pretty loose with this one adding a lot of jabby paint strokes and a lot of color to the coat. Ellie is sporting some green, aqua and purple along side her normal brown & white. As always I also provided a more tame option in case the playful highlighting is too much.

Buster

"Buster" ( see all proofs)

I love this happy smiling pup. This project is from last month. I love the one ear up and one ear down look here.

This week I hope to jump on a couple of new projects that have come in. Now is the time to order for the holidays. We are having a some what slow month, and now is the time to get my best unhurried work for Christmas. This year I am going to move my cut off dates on holiday orders up to mid November.

Mosaic Monday / new Flickr Gallery

"Dog is Good" by Jill Beninato
© the artist

"Snake Dream" By Flair Robinson
© the artist

Today I am posting 2 recent finds on Flickr. Jill is a good cyber pal. Her recent doggy mosaic is just amazing. The snake piece by Flair has a wonderful folk art feel combined with a very sophisticated design sense. Both of these works can be found in a new gallery I have started over at Flickr. Please visit my Animal Mosaic Gallery.

About Flickr Galleries: This is a new feature at Flickr that allows you to group together 18 images within a theme from your fellow flickr members. You can comment on each photo and in a sense you have the opportunity to play "on-line curator" in little group shows that you put together. You can read more about Galleries with this FAQ.
When I first discovered one of my images in someone's gallery I was immediately a bit confused and thought, hmm how did they snag my image? That is of course the knee jerk reaction of any artist when their work shows up here and there by surprise. Then I relaxed and realized it was just a new site feature, and a pretty cool one. If a member does not want to see their images shared this way they can set their account preferences to not allow it. I happen to love extra exposure.

Leonidas The Bulldog

"Leonidas" (see all proofs)

This is a fun project from this last month. The client provided the warrior helmet and I found some pretty pillow photographs to incorporate into the scene. I love working on Bulldogs.

New Doggy Pet Portraits

Sally Bold (above)

Sally Tame (above)
See all proofs

Today I proofed Sally. Those brown eyes are perfect and have plenty of sparkle present in the original photo. Many of our clients are drawn to my work because of my bold use of color and yet sometimes they can be shy about color when it comes to their own pets. For this reason I try to always offer at least one or two tame coat options in addition to a few with colorful highlighting.
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Howie Bold (above)

Howie Tame (above)
See all Proofs

I also finished Howie the Boxer this morning and uploaded his proofs today. As you can see from the original photograph I decided to lift his head and rotate it ever so slightly. I think the expression changed from "why are you pointing that camera at me" to "hmmm am I going to get a treat maybe?" The wooden slatted background is a new option I am playing around with.

When One Pet Portrait Just won't do

Twinkle, Sweetpea, Figment, Milo, Romeo and Sherman

When one pet portrait is not enough the answer is simple ... order several and do a grouping. This is a project I did a few years ago for Sherman the bulldog and pals. I love this office shot even though the light from above has created a soft effect on the artwork. The cool Pottery Barn desk and morning sunshine make this a great interior shot. I see this photo and think instead of paying bills I would want to roll around on the floor with the dog toys and Sherman. Thanks to Beverly for letting us post this great home shot.

Project Challenges:
Twinkle the parakeet was a fun challenge as the original photo had very little detail ( see below). This project taught me the importance of not allowing yourself to be limited by your original snapshots. For Twinkle's artwork I studied bird books and did a bit of research to see what detail was missing and then I painted it in using a variety of reference photos.

"Twinkle" Original photo above

"Sherman"

Mosaic Monday/ flying fox

flying fox just hanging out
Originally uploaded by smoooochie1

I just love this shot. This photograph is from a NY subway and more like this can be found at smoochie1's photo-stream.

Well it is Monday and I have only a few orders to fill this week. I guess we will work on marketing tasks and get organized for the holidays ahead.

Canine 911 Memorial - NYC

Canine 911 Memorial - NYC
Originally uploaded by Rob & Amy

Caught up with work for the day. I found this photo over at Flickr. Have a great Friday everyone and hold your loved ones close today.

New Weimaraner Art

"Weber" ( see orignal proofs here)
( see updated art here)

This handsome pup was fun to play with. The client requested tame coloring on the coat and is leaning towards more masculine background colors for a boy's room. I rotated Weber's head slightly and also filled in the ear on the right. The original photograph was pretty good, the eyes are very pretty and expressive. This large 34 x 34 is pending approval and will hopefully ship next week.

Finished Beetle Mosaic

Finished Beetle Mosaic
Originally uploaded by artpaw

I finally finished my most recent bug project. The big beetle was grouted with dove grey, I used nutmeg grout for most of the background and a light vanilla color for the center ring area under the magnifying glass. I added rubber rings in various sizes to the surface. The piece is 16 x 20. I call it "Georgij's Russian Beetles".

Steps

Steps
Originally uploaded by smaltigirl

Today I searched for Smalti Mosaic over at flickr and found this charming scene of a woman, child & dog. I have not tried smalti yet, but I did purchase some on-line and have an idea for a smalti piece later this month. I am in awe of the level of detail so many artists can achieve with this chunky material.

I love the laundry hanging in the top right corner on this piece. The white diagonal it forms brings us back into the scene.

Sunday Surfing

photo: sometimes rains in June / Flickr

"What do I do when my love is away. (Does it worry you to be alone) How do I feel by the end of the day (Are you sad because you're on your own) No, I get by with a little help from my friends" The Beatles
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A lot of people can not imagine what it is like working at home and creating alone much of the time. Most artists are alone in their studios and it can be hard when your studio is in your house. It is easy to go a bit stir crazy. Yes, the walls do close in on you at times. I am fortunate to feel somewhat connected to both an off-line community of artists and a web community. My on-line artist buddies and their blogs keep me company when things are quite around here. For my Sunday Surf post I invite you to check out what a few of my friends have been up to lately.

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Mosaic artist Christine Braillier just finished a new piece that you can see on her blog. I think this one is going in a book she is working on.

Katrina Doran recently had a great blog write up over at Stacy Alexander's blog.

Dog artist Kathy Weller recently posted a couple of great articles on her blog about why she decided to be a pet portrait artist.

Manon Doyle had a great video last month on her blog about how to do an image transfer. Check it out, she is just really getting good at the video stuff.

Moira McLaughlin has a lot of good posts lately over at Dog art Today. Check this post on Japanese paper dogs.

Melissa Langer did a Pug Rescue Event late last month and you can see pics from that at her blog.

Artist Linda O'Neill often posts her abstract paintings & collages on Fridays. Her blog is a great one to bookmark.

My best friend and husband, Dan Collins recently won an "Iron Poet" contest over at the Gather writing community. Oh, and he goes by "Atticus" over there.

Our Sunday Surf Dogs were found using Flickr's advanced search feature. That is a very cool tool to find creative commons images. Users are allowed to set their preferences to allow their photos to be reused under what is called a creative commons license. You can click through the images to visit the flickr member that posted the original photos.

photo: swortman53 / flickr

photo: Z5 / flickr

Pug Video on Vimeo

Lola and I have been playing around with creating a new pug art portfolio. We had fun with this and even bought a little stock clip from istockphoto so we could have some live puggie video as an intro. That stuff is not cheap, but it was a lot faster than getting on the phone and hunting down a local pug to shoot. I uploaded to Vimeo. I love the vimeo embed tool as it does not send you to other videos at the end from other dog artists like the youtube embed does. I think I will probably end up purchasing a pro account over at Vimeo. Please leave a comment and let me know if the video does not play for you. Oh, and Kathy Weller's pug Daisy is here along with Melissa Langer's Emmitt.

Anyway, enjoy the show.........

Pug Art Portfolio by Art Paw from Rebecca Collins on Vimeo.

DISCLAIMER: In an effort to be honest in our advertising I have to say that all but one of the interior shots was created from stock photography. Some day soon I would like to have enough in-home client shots to do an entire video of just actual client shots.

New Bulldog Art

D.C. ... a Sneak Peek

Today I am working on D.C. the English Bulldog. I am trying to get a little loose and scribbley on his coat. I still have more work to do but you can see my progress above. I will show more conservative options when I do proof my client.

New Kitty Art

"Elsie" ( See all Proofs)

This sweet kitty girl is one of several projects shipping out today. Those of you waiting on project updates, please sit tight for one more day. I have set Wednesday aside for project revisions. We have a lot of work in house right now and I am doing my best to get to everyone as quickly as possible.