I realize I actually don’t share many of the custom paintings or drawings I create for private clients (especially when they are surprise gifts!) so today I thought I would share a few recent pet and portrait commissions. Usually for family/couples/kids portraits I use pencil and white conte, but I do get asked to do the occasional oil portrait too. The one featured in this video was a unique challenge, but the client was thrilled and I felt accomplished making it work.

This first image is a chalk pastel drawing of Cooper, the puppers belonging to my long time client, Helen. He’s an active lil guy and pops up to say hi on her weekly blog as well as on our regular Zoom calls. So cute!

This second one was and oil painting I created for a Christmas gift and took a bit of skill to craft from two different photos, one being really old and one being modern and from a different angle. My client was thrilled that I was able to reunite her father with his late mother, which was a great feeling for me. You can see the challenges and process here.

This is a graphite (pencil) and white conte portrait of a couple I know from Hawai’i. Brittany commissioned this piece for their five year anniversary as a couple, and then Seth proposed soon after! How picture perfect is that?!?

Sweet Cassie made her way over the big rainbow bridge last year, but I am always humbled and honored to make memorial portraits of the most tender member of our family. These use both chalk pastel sticks for the larger blends and chalk pastel pencils for getting in the more refined details. My goal is always to pull as much personality out of pet portrait as possible, for their owners to celebrate and reminisce for all time.

If you have a family member (furry or otherwise) you’d like to commemorate, pop over to this page and tell me what’s one your mind. I’ll be happy to give you a no-obligation quote and help you think of the best way to capture their spirit forever :)

Learn more

2.20.2022

I know other peoples’ family portraits aren’t always the most exciting artwork to look at, which is part of the reason why I don’t share all of my commissions publicly, but this is one I’m especially proud of. Not only because of the meaningful concept, but because of the rough references I had to pull magic out of.

I was asked by my client to combine this photo of her grandma in an old photograph…

with this much more recent photo of her father, which was facing the wrong direction and with different lighting….yikes!

I really had to do my very best to blow up the image and pull out as many details as possible. Like these lovely blue eyes I didn’t even realize she had!

Here’s a little side-by-side comparison to see what I was able to get out of these images. I have turned down super out of focus image references in the past, simply explaining that I can only use what’s there so if the ‘info’ is not in the photo, then the painting surely won’t be able to make it up accurately.

oil painting of an older spanish woman with blue eyes in a bright sweater

I’m glad I didn’t have to turn down this one though, since my clients grandma is deceased and that’s the only photo she was able to get of her. Luckily the dad’s pic was much clearer and I was able to flip it and rework the shadows just a bit to match the grandmother’s light source.