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Boo!

Is "Talent" Overrated?

"Talent is cheaper than table salt. What separates the talented individual from the successful one is a lot of hard work". - Stephen King

Yesterday I started this post on "talent" and then I abandoned it because writing is not one of my natural talents. Today I decided what the heck, if the post is about talent being overrated then why not throw caution to the wind and toss this out there.

Sometimes I think talent is overrated. I am fortunate in that I have been told all my life that I am talented, and I have always had the ability to tap into my artistic talents to create and achieve things. I have heard "your so talented" since I was about 5 years of age and so I have always been a bit cavalier in my mind about talent as a commodity. I have never seen it as something that you can run out of someday, nor is it something to hoard or to dole out with a teaspoon. Talent "is", it just "is". I have it, and so do millions of other people I see on the web and in the world.

When it comes to talent and earning a living it is my opinion that talent is only a thing of value if you also have a kick-ass work ethic to go along with it. Talent will serve you well only if you have faith in yourself as a well rounded person with brains and skills beyond your obvious "god given" talents. I believe talent will always take a backseat to passion and that the most talented artist on the planet will never earn a dime with their artwork if they are not passionate about their work. So yea, I would have to say that in general talent is overrated. You should value your talents and nurture them, however never work under the false assumption that your unique talent is going to make you special or make you stand out. Your unique talents are only one tiny piece of who you are are and what you have to give to the world.

German Shepherd Portrait

This is Nash and he just makes me smile. He looks like a flower to me with that one ear straight up, then there is the ear ( petal ) that points to the right, and of course the lazy tongue that creates yet a third flower petal in my mind. He is just a happy looking dog.

French Bulldog Art With Pattern

Yesterday I was in a playful mood and experimented with pattern on top of a sweet Frenchie named Elle. Bold and graphic this new look may not be a client pick, but what fun to offer them something completely new in addition to my standard painterly style shown below.

Art Paw On TV!

Our artwork is going to be featured today on TV in Houston. Art Paw was contacted to create a special portrait for Great Day Houston's show host Whitney Casey's little pup Nolita. We are thrilled for the exposure and very happy with how this fun little Beagle portrait turned out. I'll be sure and post a link to the episode once it is on-line.

Yogi The Boxer

Unaltered Photo Of Yogi The Boxer ( above)

Yogi is a piece that Allison and I worked on together. For the past year or so I have been training both Allison and Diane to work with the wacom tablet and help me with the painterly portraits. This has become our most popular style and keeping up with the demand has become difficult. I still try to have a strong hand in every painterly portrait that goes out since this is my signature style.

On this piece we sat down together and discussed the original photograph for about 15 minutes. I asked Al to create more ear on the right and to place in an extra paw. Yogi is adorable and yet I thought that the original pose made this pup look just a wee bit sad. By perking up that ear on the right and adding in another playful paw I was hoping to lighten the mood a tad.

The image below was created by Allison, using the smudge tool. She has a wonderfully soft approach to the wacom and her technique is lovely. She never adds color with the paint brush or finger-painting tool however she is totally the queen around here with the smudge tool. You can see that addressing the glow eye , ears and paws have really perked this pup up. You can click images for larger versions.
Below you will see where I have started to play and have added some more color and bolder strokes here and there. You see it most around the ears, snout and paws. I like to have strong jabby-strokes and some visible line work present in most of my work.

The image below is my favorite and the one the client picked. Here I rotated this girl and erased some blanket to free up that ear on the right. By rotating her I created a much more playful pose. I used the posterize filter on this at a low opacity and then went in with some loose line-work on top using the wacom. The color is really starting to pop here.
Below I decided to just push it to a wild extreme and colorized the heck out of this girl playing with a halftone pattern along the way. This is not my favorite, but a fun option.

You can see in the small thumbnails below that composition is everything and it is important to not let your original pose or photograph limit you. I find that composition is the hardest thing to teach, and that too often new digital artists will limit themselves by the reality of the photo in front of them.

By working as a team on projects we end up putting in a lot of time on every piece and the creative ideas and sharing of skills have been making us all much stronger.

Me & Tommy at the Beach

Me & Tommy
Originally uploaded by artpaw

Well, my 3rd day back at work after a 4-day break and I am missing the ocean. I am working hard to get caught up with all the new orders that have come in this week, and all the projects from earlier this month still needing some attention. Tomorrow I think we are going to tear the office apart to rearrange and make room for my new machine. I finally broke down and got a new Mac and went ahead and upgraded to photoshop cs3. Life is good, but with every new tech-tool in life there is the ultimate awkward time where nothing quite fits or works perfect yet.

Pet Magazine Cover Art

We just returned from a quick trip to the beach yesterday. We left on Friday and took the Scotties so the blog will be full of doggy pics in the ocean very soon. Today I am posting a magazine cover we did for the Chicagoland Tails Magazine. I worked on this artwork way back in the spring and so it is exciting to see it come to life. Their designer did a great job with the aqua font and groovy floral touches on the text place holder at the bottom right. We are thrilled for the exposure in Chicago and have even had a few calls already. Our thanks go out to Natalie for contacting us with this great opportunity.

Chloe The Yellow Lab

Today I have been playing around with Chloe. Her portrait will hang in the nursery to keep her newest human "Baby Quinn" company. If you scroll down you will see the order that I created these 5 proofs in. Click images for more detail.

Soft Painterly style with solid green background in image above. Below I added in a low opacity brick wall with abstract flowers painted on it. The textural grunge quality of the brick wall below gives the piece a very urban feel.

Below I slammed on a posterize filter and increased the hue saturation. I then painted a loose black out-line around the subject and added a red tennis ball so that Chloe's stash of hoarded toys would be larger. The filter and black lines serve to flatten the piece a bit making it more graphic and stylized. This is one of my favorite proofs. I love the color.
Remembering that the client wanted soft subtle color, I desaturated Chloe a bit here and gave her a blue wall.
Below I used a conte sketch filter in blue & yellow then played with the opacity of that layer over the original layers. The effect is cool and would make a great illustration for a magazine.

Sleepy Sundays

At this time of year we only take one day off a week, and we usually like to spend it doing the least amount of anything that we can. These are some older photos of pets that have come and gone. The 1st is Dan & Atticus & Nessie at our 1st place together. The other pic is Atticus & Poppy. Poppy was a visiting rescue pup.

Selling Art On the Internet

A lot of my local artist pals are in awe of my ability to run a successful on-line art business. These same pals are doing good if they check their e-mail once a day. I get occasional calls from very talented portrait artists that are new to the web and wanting some coaching. Today I offer one piece of advice ... buy something right now on-line from an artist you like. If you are not buying art on-line why do you think anyone else would. If you are not a savvy on-line art buyer, how do you expect to be a savvy seller? Sure you can study your competition to see what they are up to and how they do things, but there is nothing quite like purchasing from another artist to learn about e-commerce. Even if you have a bad buying experience, it will teach you something. I have been very lucky to deal with only first-rate sellers this summer.

To show that I practice what I preach I will share some of my summer finds. Check out my cool purchases ... I own these goodies!
My most recent purchase is this stunning octopus collage by Jodie Hurt. It was shipped with some colorful mini-business cards that were 1/2 the size of standard cards.

Find Jodie Hurt at Etsy

Below is a fun little toy from artist Jeff Soto. We also have a couple of his prints and a limited edition book by him. Jeff seems to always include free stickers with his shipments.

Artist's Edition "Blue Cryer" Qee from Jeff Soto

Vintage Scotties From Ebay

Levi Kitty Art

This is Levi, another portrait for the San Diego Animal Care Clinic.

Yet Another Photography Link

Yesterday I was bragging on Allison's photography, but you should also check out the work of our other Photographer, Dianne Sapra. Dianne is a very talented studio photographer and works with clients in the pet industry. Check out her site at DianneSapra.com

Tommy shot by Allison

Tommy
Originally uploaded by iheartbabyjr

This is a photo taken by Allison over the weekend. Did you know that you can rent special lenses for your camera? Allison rented a 16 mm fish eye lens and this is one of the results of that experiment. Tommy really adores Allison. He is not really a people dog so much as he is all consumed by his ball. He does love Allison though and is very protective of her. He is the easiest dog we have to shoot because all you have to do to get him to sit still is show him the ball and he will sit frozen until you let him have it.
Anyway click this image to go to Allison's photo stream at Flickr.

Pirate in the sky

Pirate in the sky
Originally uploaded by artpaw

Today is Sunday and I like posting sleeping pet photos on Sunday however today we got up at 5:00 a.m. to see the hot air balloons in Plano take off. It was fun to break from our normal day of rest routine. Allison suggested I take Dan out there to shoot. We had a blast. Allison is quite the photographer so if you want to see some really cool balloon photos check her Flickr page. She has been experimenting with a fish eye lens.

You can also see more pics from the day in my balloon set at Flickr.

Wrestling Octopus Mosaic

"Wrestle This Sucker"

Today I went and picked up a few of my recent mosaic pieces that I was having framed. This one is called "Wrestle This Sucker". In researching Octopus for my first glass mosaic project I discovered that young men use to wrestle octopus back in the 60's. I found this quite shocking and a little sad. I know that these cephalopods look like slimy monsters however once you start reading about octopus you sort of get attached to them. Below is a detail of a photo collaged under my glass that shows 3 men holding a defeated Octopus. Of course the huge tentacles holding the yellowed photo indicate a much larger Octopus reflecting on maybe a loved one lost or something. I dunno, it is a decorative piece without too much deep meaning. The collaged text that you can read has words like predator and human and so on. I really had fun with this one. It was my 2nd piece, and it measures 12 x 12. It is framed in a brushed aluminum.


My addiction to mosaic work started with a simple class that I took a few months ago at The Dallas Creative Arts Center. Most major cities have some sort of arts center or community college that offer a wide variety of classes to spark your creativity. It is hard to set aside the time for a class but once you do you can regain a deeper sense of self, and taking care of that self.

Meeting with an old Pal

Today I met with an old photographer pal. Kris Hundt was part of an artist's networking group I belonged to back in the 90's. The group was really more of a support group for Dallas creatives struggling to make a living with their art. We had all read the The Artist's Way and the group was structured around Julia Cameron's writing. Today Kris is just ridiculously successful and shoots stunning photos of the famous and not so famous among us. It was fun to meet up and share resources and ideas.

Kris is never afraid to put herself out there. She has a fun little promo clip over at You Tube. Check it out below:


Kris probably does not realize it but she is partially responsible for the creation of Art Paw. It was one of her photographs of my dog Atticus that inspired me to play around in Photoshop 9 years ago. Thanks again Kris!

Jack The Boxer

This is a memorial project for Jack the Boxer. This sweet boy's proofs will be on the main site tomorrow. I have been away from the blog for awhile this last week as I try in vain to get ahead of my work. I do feel like I am on target with our commissions, and we are eager to gear up for the holidays.

I enjoyed playing with composition on Mr. Jack. You will notice an entirely different mood in the top image which seems more playful due to the angle and rotation. This shot was taken during his last week on a favorite blanket. The handsome and noble straight on look in the image below may be very appropriate depending on the mood Jack's Mom is wanting.

Nikki

This old gal is Nikki. She is one of about 19 portraits we are working on for an Animal Care Clinic in San Diego. We are very excited to be working on portraits of pets belonging to the clinic staff. These canvas prints will decorate the lobby and exam rooms.

I really fell in love with this gal and all the white in her muzzle & face. This slightly asymmetrical composition makes me grin, that ear on the right is just too cute hanging off to the side the way it does.

Self Publishing Advice

Check out this list of terrific articles from Daniel M. Davis:
Self Publishing Advice

Daniel is a very talented independent artist and runs the groovy site Steam Crow Press.
He is very generous on his site and offers articles with advice for other illustrators and artists.

When looking for business inspiration on the web you can find it in such a wide variety of places. I enjoy checking out the hip well designed sites from young artists and designers. I also like looking at huge commercial sites like my favorite 3 "A's" ... Amazon, Adobe and Apple.

Time spent surfing the web is never wasted ... you never know when you will bump into some little tid-bit of knowledge or inspiration that will take your business in a whole new direction.