Diego & Skylar / New Dog Art

"Skylar" ( see all proofs)

"Diego" (see all proofs)

These two pups were a lot of fun. The original photos were very high in quality and shot by pet photographer Jill Beninato. We are starting to get very busy here at Art Paw, so stay tuned for more artwork this week.

Cody The Black Lab

"Cody" (See all proofs)

This handsome water dog was a joy to play with. The original photo had a lot of detail and that made my job easier. This week I hope to post a lot of artwork on the blog. I am working on a Kitty, Bulldog, Dane, Chihuahuas and a few other pets.

Mosaic Monday

Dog Mosaic by Bridget Navoda
"Repete in Repose with his ball Wilson"

Hello Monday. I thought this terrific 3d pup was a great image to start the week with. Click here to find the original post and artist.

Art Paw Has been Featured

This week we were lucky to be featured in a couple of terrific blogs. There is an in depth article and interview over at Digital Image Magazine. Thanks to Bob Nolin for contacting us about for this interview. Bob had a few questions for me about marketing and PR.

My friend Moira over at Dog Art Today just informed me that we also got a little mention at Zuniga Interiors. Thanks to Michelle for the mention on her great post about Greyhounds.

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Seems like the abundance is just starting. Today I am rich in Scotties. A good friend just dropped off Celtie and Rufus to visit for a few days. We love these 2 Scotts and will enjoy their antics over the coming weekend. I'll try to post some photos soon.

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Today we are working on portraits. I should have several new works to post soon.

Oynx The Pug

"Oynx"
The Black Chinese Pug

I don't think I ever posted Oynx from this last month. This adorable Puggie is shipping to France today. She is an 18 x 24 and I think "she" looks great. I really like the background that the client chose on this one.

Mosaic Monday / Dane

Dane
Originally uploaded by pixelhut

Found this terrific wall by doing a google image search for Dog Mosaic. Original post is over at Flickr by pixelhut.

Click here for enlarged version.

Scotties know I have been cheating on them

I am home from vacation. The kitty above is Albus, and I know that my dogs must think I went all the way to North Carolina to cheat on them with some fluffy tabby. This sweet and friendly kitty lives outside the rustic Inn we stayed at. Whenever we gathered outside to sit and talk with family Albus would jump from lap to lap purring and drooling.

The barn shot above is from our last morning. Dan and I got up at like 6:00 a.m. to drive around the countryside shooting old barns and other stuff. It was a fun and special morning that we spent together.

I am ready to jump on things here at Art Paw tomorrow morning. A few new orders came in while I was on vacation. I will be e-mailing clients tomorrow with expected proofing dates. Even though I did have someone holding down the fort for me a few balls were dropped here at work and I will see what I can do to juggle those on Monday. If you are a client waiting on a proof or an e-mail from me please be patient for 24 more hours and I will see what I can do to get in touch with you regarding your project.

Shifting Gears

gears
Originally uploaded by artpaw

We have arrived at our vacation spot ... shifting gears into a slower pace. I shot this while on the road. It is some old rusty machine.

Getting back to this weekend's subject of how to find cool art blogs to follow, I suggest you play over at Flickr. Flickr has tons of artists posting new art every day. If you see something you like just click on the user's profile and see if they have a blog link. You can also use the Flickr search feature to look for specific types of artists or painters. You can even find groups devoted to a specific type of art.

Commenting With Style

We just passed the Tennessee River. I am blogging from the car today. Fun Times!

Recently a lot of business blogs are telling people to get out there and comment on other blogs to encourage others to visit your own blog or site. Some people do this well and some people do it in a hurried "drive by" fashion. I tend to comment in a variety of ways, and in reality my goal in leaving a comment is never just a desire to get traffic. When I am visiting a new blog for the first time I try to leave a comment that refers back to something about the artwork or subject within the post. When I visit one of my regular artist pals that I see a few times a week, I admit I will occasionally leave a quick little: "great art", " "good job", or " well done". In these cases I really just want to say hi, and let my friends know I am reading them this week. So a comment can function in a variety of ways. It can be an introduction, a hello, and yes it can even be constructive criticism. A comment should never be an advertisement. Most people know this instinctively and I have to say that very few artists have ever left a comment on my blog saying "hey I do pet portraits too, go check them out at www.mygreatsite.com". When I do get a spammy comment it is generally from a non-art site that is pet related.

So just how do you get traffic by leaving a comment without actually saying "please go to: www.mygreatsite.com". Well for those of you that have never left a blog comment, what you need to know is that most blog writers set their commenting preferences to allow commenters to include a web link. I personally think that the appropriate web link to use in that field is a web link to the commenter's own blog and not a web link to a website that offers goods or services. If the commenter does not have a blog then a link to a portfolio or business site is perfectly acceptable. When you type in that web link it usually will read as the name you type in the "name field" (see image below). Your name will show up blue and be clickable and it will take readers to your blog. I usually just type in my first name "Rebecca" in the name field. I am going to change that starting today. The other day I was reading a blog post about Lauren Nassef's stolen artwork and I saw a comment by someone I know a little via the web, Claudine Hellmuth. I don't know her real well but I know her work and I know her name very well. When I saw her full name I got a visual image of her terrific work and I knew she was not Claudine Smith. If you see the screen shot below you will see 3 comments left by 3 different artists. Diane does mixed media art, Melissa is another doggy artist and Manon does a lot of art journaling. Oh, and Emmitt is a cute teenage Puggie. Melissa & Manon are both giving me more than just a first name, they would not need to ... I know them well. By giving more than just a first name they are also giving all my readers a little more info as to who they are. They are making their profile link more interesting, and therefor more clickable.

So to sum it up I will post some Dos and Don'ts on commenting. This is not law, and opinions will vary widely on "commenting with style". In fact please leave a comment and add your own favorite dos and don'ts.

DO:
Do try to leave a thoughtful comment when visiting a new blog for the first time.
Do leave a link to your own blog in the link field on the submission form.
Do use your full name (if you are comfortable with that).
Do remember that in addition to possible blog traffic you may also be building reciprocal relationships that will benefit you in many ways.

Don't:
Don't leave an http://weblink within the actual "body of your comment" . That is not necessary and could be seen as spammy. The blogger will give you the chance to add a link in a special field if they choose to. This rule can often be broken among friends when sharing additional resources and info that is on topic.
Don't paste the same 4 word sentence into half a dozen posts on the same blog.
Don't just be a "drive by" commenter, find some blogs you really enjoy and visit them often ... comment a lot and comment well!

Later I will talk about how to find those cool art blogs you are going to love and want to comment on.

Busted For A Dismissive Attitude

Today I received a pretty spot on comment that nailed me for being dismissive towards beginner artists and I realize once again that you have to choose your words carefully in life or you may end up looking like a butt, or you may show your butt when in fact you are actually just trying to be generous.

The post in question was actually a post that was supporting another portrait artist and yet one reader zeroed in on a rather snobby attitude that came out on my part regarding beginner artists that e-mail random requests for support and promotional help. In reality I do spend a lot of time writing for and encouraging new artists. I have a tips section on my blog and I create photoshop tutorials to help people along. What I don't do and do not have time to do is respond personally to every single random e-mail that requests a link exchange, or a blog feature. I just don't have enough hours in the day to do this and so yea, I often roll my eyes and I do get impatient with people. I'm human.

So this next week I want to offer up advice to any beginning or seasoned artist that may want information on how to get their blog, site, or artwork talked about by other artists. There are very effective ways to do this and there are clumsy spammy ways to do this. The artist I featured last week had someone within their team send a very professional e-mail to me. They spoke to me with some flattery and yet more as though we were already peers and I was happy to support them.

So, tomorrow, from the road I will post on blog etiquette among artists.
I'm stuck in a car for 15 hours so this is a great time to talk about some stuff I have been wanting to touch on for some time now.

Tyson At Home!

"Tyson At Home"

My most recent 54 x 34 inch portrait client just sent me a photograph of her work hanging in the home. Her house looks much like the lovely stock photos we sometimes use for promotional images. I am impressed that there is the perfect amount of wall space on the sides of the piece. In our tiny 1940's bungalow this piece looked so massive while in this modern and spacious home it looks like just the perfect fit. Thanks to Tyson's Mom for sending this on over .... I love having authentic in home shots!

For more home decorating ideas check out the recent video that Lola helped me put together, well ok Lola actually put it together, but I showed her how and I culled the images. In this video we try to show that Art Paw Pet portraits can work in any room and on any wall.

Dog and Cat Art Portfolio from Rebecca Collins on Vimeo.

Italian Greyhound Art

"Ava & Archer" ( See all proofs)

Working hard today to get organized and see who all needs proofing this week. We are going to the mountains next week. Lola will be here holding down the fort and of course the Scotties will have their favorite person on the planet house sitting so they won't be alone at night. I feel like I have a zillion things to do to get ready for the trip.

About Ava & Archer:
These two adorable Italian greyhounds were a lot of fun to play with. Check out their fancy plush bedding. Do you think they let the humans sit on the couch too? Photo challenges included a lack of crisp detail and lack of contrast. Positive things about the photo include lovely eyes, and a charming pose by both pups.We all know how hard it is to get everyone looking good in one shot. I really had fun with this project and enjoyed picking up on the pattern in the ornate pillow, with a few different wallpaper background choices. I love mixing patterns and find that if the colors are similar in richness you can get away with some fun combos.

Mosaic Monday

"Prince Ropork" By Kate Rattray

"Rain" By Barbara Benson Keith

Today for a little inspiration to start the week I went over to one of my favorite communities, the Contemporary Mosaic Art group over at Ning. They have tons of amazing and talented mosaic artists. The group is a friendly place and terrific spot to get an idea of what is happening in Mosaics today.

Galveston Dogs

These are a couple of random doggies that I shot while on vacation this last week in Galveston. Even when I get away from work I am drawn to other people's pets and especially when I am away from home without my dogs I feel a strong need to talk to everyone I see that has a dog. I swear if I lived in a tourist town I might start a business renting out a "dog for a day" for travelers like myself that go through dog withdrawal when traveling. The bottom photo reminds me of Jamie's pup Fergie.

Colors Of Galveston

Galveston Texas
Originally uploaded by artpaw

Hey guys, I am home and settling back into work after a quick weekend trip to Galveston Texas. The city seems to be recovering well from Ike. I will post some cute dogs I shot on the strand tomorrow. I did not shoot a lot of photos. This house caught my eye right as we drove towards the beach and we went back the next day to shoot it.

Young Deer Bathing Kitty

This video is just way too cute! The web is abundant with interspecies wet nurses but this is one of the first videos I have seen of an animal grooming another animal from a different species. The tabby cat is digging the attention and the deer seems really happy as well... makes you wonder if the cat has been oiled up with a tasty treat or something. I don't mean to be cynical. Enjoy the cuteness and have a great weekend!

By the way, video originally discovered over at the Animal Crazy Blog.

Pet Portraits On Cardboard!

ronandjoe.com

Earlier this summer someone with another pet portrait company e-mailed me to see if I might like to feature their artwork on the blog. Nine out of 10 times I decline or ignore these sort of requests because lets face it, I am here to talk about "me", and occasionally I'll link to some of my dog artist friends that I share a support system with. So seeing the e-mail I rolled my eyes and clicked on the link, expecting some beginner site and so on. To my pleasant surprise I was charmed by not only the originality of the artwork, but also the clean slick website that presented it.

These fresh and original works are create on cardboard. When you visit their site be sure and click on the images so you can see the pop up window that will have a mouse-over showing you the depth these works have.
Their starting price is only $125 so I may just have to see what they can do with a Scottie. I really do adore their use of unexpected materials and their playful style. Check out RonandJoe.com and tell them Art Paw sent ya.

A Few Big Dogs

This week I have finalized some artwork for a few big pups. Meisie's Mom ordered 2 portraits and she will qualify for our repeat client discount that we are offering this month. Pete & Haley are new clients and their Mom is taking advantage of our 8 x 10 promo. Click here to learn more about our July sale ... keep in mind that it ends soon.

Meisie Close Crop ( see all proofs)Meissie Full Body ( see all proofs)
Haley ( see all proofs)

Pete ( see all proofs)

Party Animal Zine / Rescue Charity Project

Cover Art By Jill Beninato

The Party Animals Project benefiting A Place to Bark is now available for purchase as a beautiful zine. This printed book is really stunning and our own Scottie Big Tommy is thrilled to have his artwork included. I was really impressed with both the layout and the print quality on the book. I thought the colors were very very close to my original artwork, and that rarely happens with print on demand services. The book is being billed as a "zine" however I like to think of it is an auction catalog. Order your copy today so you can pick out the original artwork that you will be bidding on in the fall.

"Make A Wish"

"Party Animals features the artwork of 21 different artists from across the country. The proceeds from the sale of this book will directly benefit the animals at A Place To Bark animal rescue. All work was donated by the participating artists and the original pieces will be auctioned off on Ebay in the Fall of 2009. This 43 page, full color book includes reproduced artwork from each artist, information about A Place To Bark animal Rescue, How To's, ways to get involved with helping animals, a dog treat recipe and much more!"

Please click here to preview and purchase your copy today for only $20.

A special shout out and thank you to Jill for including us again this year and for all of her hard work with her on-going artist collaborations.

More Pet Portrait Projects

Today and tomorrow will be pretty busy. I am finalizing artwork for Meisie, Zoey, and Mia. Meisie's project has been in-house for a couple weeks now. She is a lovely Ridgeback and her human has ordered a few gift portraits from us in the past. We are doing 2 portrait projects from 2 different pics for Meisie.

Zoey & Mia are 2 fluffy pups that will ship to Canada. I am still playing around with Mia, but I will post Zoey below. Check out the ground on this first sample of Zoey. I incorporated the actual photo background layered on top of one of my painterly grounds. I set the photographic layer effects to be hard light and then played with color and splatter brushes.

"Zoey" ( See all proofs)

Mosaic Monday / More Bugs

This weekend I went to Kittrell Riffkind and spent a small fortune on iridescent glass. I am working on a new series of bugs. The small beetle plaques below are going to be part of a larger project. They will be mounted on to larger boards that will be layered with collage text and glass. The yummy iridescent glass is not photographing all that well. I will not grout the backgrounds on my bugs until I decide on the overall look of the frame panel boards.

When I first started working in mosaics I thought the iridescent glass was sort of cheesy. It is pretty and everything, but it was a bit too disco-ish for me. Now that I am working on bugs I realize that there are plenty of places in nature where iridescent color is quite natural. Bugs, fish and bird feathers all tend to have an iridescent sheen.

Green beetle to far right is still in progress.

Last week I was very fortunate to be featured on the terrific blog of Mosaic artist Kim Grant.  You can check out Kim's portfolio on her main site.  Or visit her blog to read her interview with yours truly.

New Golden Retriever Art

"Scotch" ( see all proofs)

Today I proofed Scotch the Golden Retriever. I really had a blast working on this handsome pup and the original photograph was a total joy to play with.

I have started rating my client original photographs as "poor, fair, or good" in quality. My first reason for this was so that people would look at their original photos, then look at the resulting artwork and understand that I have gone to extra measures to compensate for a lack of detail, glow eye or other flaws. With that said it is now my hope that potential clients will start to see the images that I am rating as good or very good and learn by seeing just what a good quality photograph looks like. I tell people all the time that high quality, high resolution photographs make all the difference and yet without visual examples of good quality I am really not defining what I am talking about. So thanks to Scotch's humans for sending me a terrific example of a high quality good photograph.

Another Chance to Save On a Pet Portrait

Yesterday I posted some Christmas in July promos and today I want to share a link to an auction where you can swoop on an 11 x 14 custom pet portrait by Art Paw. There is only one bid so far. The auction is to help one of my photographer pals earn some extra traveling coin for a mission trip she is going on to Peru to photograph a journey with Doctors that are helping out the indigenous peoples of the Amazon. She is also auctioning off a Wacom tablet just like the ones we use to create our artwork. There are a couple of pieces of photography gear, a massage, candles, Yoga instruction, oh and groovy dog bowls from Pawcasso. If you are local you need to bid on her pet photo session! Kris does terrific animal photography.

Go check out the auction goodies: http://krisandperu.wordpress.com/

To bid you just leave a comment ( on her site, not this one, follow link above) . I have never seen a blog formatted auction before ...very well done.

Christmas In July!

Have a lot of good dogs on your holiday shopping list? Well it is time to place a custom portrait order and save. Returning clients just need to use the coupon code: "repeat" when they check out and they can save 20% on their custom art project. You must be a repeat portrait client to qualify for that discount and it works on any size & style. New clients can try us out with an intro sized mini print for less than $100. Click here to learn more about that offer.

Lucy Sneak Peek

Today I have been playing with Lucy the King Charles Cavalier Spaniel. I have quite a bit more work to do. Today I am posting my progress.

click to enlarge

As you can see from the photo above there was very little contrast between Lucy and her bedding. Everything also had a bit of a yellow tone to it, so the first step was correcting the levels and the overall color. I also ditched the plush toy since we will be adding a sock monkey toy.

WEDS: LUCY UPDATE- PROOFS ARE ON-LINE

Word Mosaic/ A Video

Ok, I know it is Mosaic Monday time, but I found this terrific video while stumbling. I'll stretch my Monday a bit and call it a Mosaic, of sorts ..."you know"?

Typography from Ronnie Bruce on Vimeo.

Otto The Shepherd

Working on this sweet puppy today. I have a lot more work to do.

New Jack Russell Portrait

"Tyson" (See All Proofs)
34x54 inches

The orange ground above was the client pick.
A very good choice I think.

This happy little fellow is Tyson. He is a very large 34 x 54 inch portrait. We will be printing & stretching this guy later tonight. It will take us most of tomorrow afternoon to package him up. I love doing these larger prints. They are really impressive big. They can be a challenge to package up as we have to build a special sized box and we really bubble the heck out of them to protect them in transit. They are worth the extra care and work, I can't wait to see him stretched.

Learning how to say no

Today I received a very nice e-mail from a terrific non profit group that wanted to know if I was interested in helping them with a logo design. When I first started this business 11 years ago I thought I really had to say yes to every request that came across my desk from a non profit. It seemed to me that if I was truly going to be devoted to my 4-legged subjects that it would be wrong to not help small orgs even when I may not be the best person for the task at hand.

 

The reality is that logo design work is hard. Getting it right is hard for seasoned graphic designers and twice as hard for a fine artist like myself. Many times people think they want a terrific animal image or wonderful furry mascot incorporated into their logo. A pro will be able to explain to them the realities of how many places that logo will need to look good. Is it simple and clean enough to work on a business card, web banner, small magazine ad, and so on. A good logo really needs to say a lot with what looks like very little effort.  

Anyway if you are an artist reading this I know at some point someone has or will ask you to illustrate a children's book for them, create a logo, or design a website.  It can be very hard to explain to people that you may not be the best person for the job, but it is important that you learn how to do that sooner than later.  Below is my e-mail letter. It was very hard to write as I hate saying no, but it is better than creating a logo that I know would not be the best solution for them.

"Thank you so much for the kind words about my work. Unfortunately I will have to pass on the logo work.  Creating logos stresses me out beyond words. A logo is such a crucial and important part of any business or organization. It is very hard to get it just right. In the last 11 years I have reworked my own logo 3 or 4 times. I just honestly do not feel that logos are the sort of design work that I am good at. I would encourage you to try to find a local designer, not an artist, but a graphic designer that you can meet with in person. A skilled graphic designer will be able to create something for you that will look good in print, on the web, and in a variety of formats.

Best of luck and thank you again for your interest in my work."

Art Paw Featured at Daily Candy!

Thanks to the folks over at The Dallas Daily Candy for featuring us yesterday. Our daily traffic  doubled yesterday with over 2500 visitors.  DailyCandy is a free daily e-mail newsletter and website, an insider’s guide to what’s hot, new, and undiscovered — from fashion and style to gadgets and travel.