Rilo.

I feel like this card deserved a post of its own. Rilo is the cat of our dear besties. Though he doesn't love us as much as we love him, it was fun to paint him on a card for them. When this picture showed up on Facebook I knew it was the one I had to paint. This is on the continued experiments with watercolor and pen.

The lovely and handsome, Rilo.

Watercolor Cards Part Two

A few more watercolor cards I've created with watercolor and pen. Luckily Ben got me some new pens in my stocking so I'm excited to experiment with some of those. 

A card for Patti after adopting two pugs.

A card for Jenni, my Secret Santa at work.

Orchids.

My mom has a blank wall in her office that required either something large or three medium size pieces. For Christmas, since she is the Orchid Whisperer, I decided to paint from botanical illustrations I've been researching. I love the simplicity of botanical illustrations, especially the vintage ones that have little to no background. Here are the three pieces I did for her.

A Rooster for Nancy.

For Christmas this year, I took it upon myself to do some artwork. Sometimes this is stressful in the beginning but this year I ended up with some pieces I was really proud to give as gifts.

This was mentioned by my dad that my stepmom wanted for her kitchen. Turns out, it's good luck to have a rooster in your kitchen. It was really fun to do and I love the colors.

A rooster for Nancy.

Watercolor Cards Part One

Well now that I've given most of the artwork I've done for gifts away, I figured I can start posting some of it here. I'll start with the watercolor cards I've made for friends for various occasions. Before leaving Denver, I got a great gift card to the best art supply store in the world. I stocked up on these watercolor blank cards that enabled me to experiment a little. Well I've LOVED it. I've sworn off oils for awhile to get to play with watercolors a bit more. Here are some of the cards.

Birthday card for Janine.

Christmas card for Corwin.

Christmas card for Marc.

More cards and paintings to come....

Happy Birthday Kate!

I am in the BEST small group at my church. Seriously, the BEST. It's a group of lovely women who are real and genuine and absolutely hilariously fun. One of these lovely friends is Kate. Her birthday was this past weekend and tonight during breakfast for dinner we celebrated. I made her this card because she is a fan of pugs. I found the image on the internet then drew it. I've been experimenting with watercolors and can't get enough. Enjoy and Happy Birthday again Kate!

A few updates...

Man I've been busy. I have slowly started painting again. Exploring some more with watercolors. It's been really fun trying new techniques. Once the holidays pass I'll have even more fun pieces to show you. But for now here are the oldest four paintings I've done. I am really going to try and post these more regularly. :)

These first two were for a very dear and lovely friend of mine. She is a fellow cat lover who has two GORGEOUS boys. I painted two of her instagram pics for her birthday and found the cutest little square frames for them. 

 Percy

Tobias 

This is the second wiener dog winner from my church's wiener nationals this summer.

 Howie Long

And last but not least is this cute kitty. A sweet friend here in California commissioned this piece for her sister's birthday. Peppercorn is her sisters bestie and is adorable. There were a lot of hilarious pics to pick from but I liked the sweet face of this picture.

Peppercorn

More to come soon. I promise!

Frankie, a winning wiener.

As mentioned before in this blog, the 8th Annual Wiener Nationals happened at Highway two weekends ago. It was a hilariously fun day full of cute dogs and many kinds of mustard. Two lucky wiener dogs won portraits of themselves as prizes. 

Which brings me to my introduction of Frankie. Frankie is one of the cutest wiener dogs I've ever seen and when the three pictures of him were sent to me as options to paint, I was happy that Chris and Jen's favorite was also mine. 

So here is Frankie in all his cuteness. 

(this has got to be one my favorite paintings so far!)

HBD Audra!

Audra is one of the first friends I had in college.We met at orientation and then had the majority of our classes together. She's fantastic and fun and I'm thankful for having her be a hilarious sidekick in college.  She's a fellow kitty lover and a squirrel whisperer (I promise, they speak the same language). So for her birthday, I thought it only appropriate that a squirrel be on her card.

Ornery Harley.

So after Iroh we adopted Harley. She was the cutest on the website when we looked at the Dumb Friends League and when we met her she wasn't the friendliest but something about her drew us to her. She has taken longer to warm up but she is slowly getting there - and it makes her affection that more meaningful.

Here she is.

I got some wood at Hobby Lobby that has a lot more texture and experimented with it for this piece. I like it, pretty cool. Probably not perfect for ALL projects but I think it has potential.

My Sweet Iroh.

Iroh was our first pet. We adopted him as a kitten and he was about 3 months old and had a cold but we adopted him anyway. We were totally smitten from the git-go with this one. He had the biggest personality for such a little kitten. We brought him home and he became the BEST pet I have ever owned. He played fetch, loved to cuddle and regularly slept on Ben's pillow or in between us. He regularly had colds and respiratory issues but was still fun loving and would just tire easily when playing. He would have to take frequent rests. 

In about October of last year, after having him for a year and half, he developed a serious bladder issue. We took him to an emergency vet one night (where we learned about a heart condition he had all along), then to our regular vet the next. And then the next day he took a turn for the worse. Ben and I made the heart wrenching decision to put this little guy down because he was so so sick and would never really be able to lead a full life and wasn't much they could do for him. It was awful, terrible, I wouldn't wish that feeling on anyone. Together we had never experienced so much pain or sadness. I know my heart will always be a little broken because of it.

Luckily, we were able to adopt again and love another critter, Harley. She is very different than Iroh in every way possible and we adopted her when she was a little older than 1. So we're still getting used to her and she us, but she's a sweet cat and learning to love and slowly cuddle the way Iroh did.

With ALL of that said, I have never painted any of my own pets. With Iroh it felt too personal and too soon. But, I took the plunge this week to paint him, had a meltdown looking at all his sweet pictures and then gained my composure enough to finish this painting. It was a good healing step for me and I now more fully understand what pet portraits can mean to someone, especially once their critter is gone. I'm now painting Harley (so she won't be jealous ;) ) so hopefully that'll be up here soon too.

Hazel Prudence

Our church every year hosts the Wiener Nationals, a day of hot dogs and wiener dog races with about 75 wiener dogs (last year's number approximately). This year as a part of the grand prize, the winner will get a free pet portrait done by me. I wanted to have some pet portrait as an example for that day so people could get excited and know my work. Which brings us to Hazel.

This is Hazel, as a puppy. She is owned and loved by Dean and Diane, two people at our church and they have two wiener dogs, Hazel and Abigail. Diane and I started talking about painting, had a painting day together and I used her sweet Hazel as the example for the Wiener Nationals.

Santa Cruz Pelican

This is the painting that sort of accompanies the seagull. Both of these photographs were taken on the same day on the Wharf in Santa Cruz. This pelican was very friendly and loved this man who kept hand feeding him fish. Once the man left, he posed a bit for some pictures for me. This one isn't as much a favorite like the seagull but was a good exploration in watercolor for me.

Santa Cruz Seagull

This has to be one of my favorite things I've done in awhile, especially since I'm still getting the hang of watercolors. I don't feel like the scan does it justice. I did this painting from a photograph I took while in Santa Cruz. The seagulls are everywhere and I feel like they pose for pictures just for me.  This one was sitting on the edge of the railing. I have one coming up of a pelican in the same look and then I'm currently working on a sea lion painting. Hopefully I'll finish it soon so I can share it here.

Sweet Karen's Birthday

The worst part of living in California is being away from friends and family - especially on their birthdays. I made this card for my dear friend and making it made me miss her even more. I really liked the style of it and hope to explore that a little more. (done with ink and watercolor)

Field Sparrow

One of the great things about living in a new place is new wildlife. I've been lucky enough to get some fantastic photos lately. Which have provided even greater references to draw from. I now fully appreciate my college professors telling me over and over to take your own photos to draw from.

This sparrow below was taken at the Baylands. I've blogged about it a little on the other one, but it's this cool nature preserve here that has a lot of neat bird life. These birds are cute and tiny and everywhere and have the prettiest little song. I've been exploring with watercolors lately and this was the first attempt. Enjoy!

Max.

I'm not sure if y'all remember the painting I did of sweet Zoe, but Max was her sibling in a way. Joan owned both of these sweet dogs and unfortunately Max became very old and blind and was put down. It breaks my heart but I love knowing these dogs brought so much joy and love to their family and were given such a great life. Max liked to play in the snow and I loved this picture of him so it's the one I chose. Also, Joan and her husband have since adopted a sweet new Great Dane mix named Peanut who is just as adorable as Zoe and Max.

Vinnie.

As you can tell, I've been addicted to Cadmium Yellow lately. I can't seem to get enough. Anyway, this is Vinnie. A sweet pug who is dearly missed by my aunt and cousin. It's always so sad to paint pets who are no longer with us, but such a sweet reminder of what joy they brought. Hope you guys like this as much as I do. 

Thomas

My sister has three jack russells. For her birthday last year, Christmas last year and now her birthday this year, I have painted their portraits. This is the final one of Thomas. Thomas was her first jack russell so I felt a bit more pressure when painting this one but I think it worked out. It was supposed to be a surprise but while video chatting her I couldn't resist showing her. So it was mailed today and she should get it soon.I tried a new process to have the animated gif show off the process, we'll see if it works. 

Pop Art Pet Portrait

Quite awhile ago I did a pop art pet portrait for a family friend. It was one that took me quite awhile to get going but once I started I couldn't stop. I absolutely adore these critters. Here are some in progress pics as well as the final piece. Thanks Jan for the opportunity to paint these sweet faces!