Meet Your New Best Friend

This was another one of those ideas I had that I just had to get down, if anything to get it out of my head so there's space for the next idea!

I am a passionate advocate for animals, and if I could imagine a perfect life for Darlin' Tracy and I it would be to have enough money--and land--to adopt every dog, cat, rabbit, or whatever that needed a home.

All these animal portraits are from pieces I had already done last year; it was just a matter of putting them all into this PSA-type poster and writing the very simple, very direct copy.

Who knows, maybe some animal shelter or charity will see this and want to use it? If so, it'll be more than worth the effort it took to put it together...

American Pit Bull

I was pretty disgusted over the recent news that Nike signed Michael Vick to some endorsement deal, so that inspired me to do this pro-Pit-Bull, over-the-top patriotic portrait of the breed.

As a model, I used my favorite pit, the gorgeous Dolly Menck!

San Diego Zoo - 2003

I did this piece--using a bunch of animal portraits I had recently finished--purely as a graphic design exercise. Its really simple, but I loved how it came out.

Mookie

This is Mookie, a sweet pup whose mommy, named Christine, was the winning bidder in the Animal Care for Artists auction they held a couple of months ago to raise money for the organization.

I had volunteered a free pet portrait as one of the prizes, and a week or so after Christine won my prize I was staring at a picture of Mookie. Christine specifically asked me to use the pattern you see here for the background; it matches the carpet in the room that this portrait will hang in.

Working on this was pure fun, and I'm glad I could help in some small way to raise money for the ACA, a truly worthy cause.

From The Vault: Sheepdog - 2003

This was one of a huge wave of animal portraits I did in 2003, old school: cut-paper, glue, and paint!

My style doesn't mesh well with cuddly animals, but I thought this one came out pretty well. I must not have been the only one who thought that, because I later sold it at a small art show where I had a lot of my animal stuff on display!

Bonzo

Yet another dog who needs a good home!

Bella

Yet another dog who needs a good home!

Update: In between writing this post and today, I found out that Bella has been adopted into a good home. Happier news I couldn't have heard!

Sly

Yet another portrait of a dog who needs a good home, Sly. This was one a special request by one of the people trying to help the (not-so) little guy. How could I say no?

Jerry

Yet another portrait of a dog who needs a good home, Jerry. Jerry's off-kilter mug completely melted my heart once I saw it on Facebook. If circumstances were different, I'd be on a plane right now on my way to California to pick him up. I find him completely, utterly charming.

Fiona

This is another portrait of a dog who needs a good home, Fiona.

Julie

Special Bonus Post!

After doing my portrait of Diesel, one of the beautiful dogs that's currently residing at the Baldwin Park, CA dog shelter, I got the chance to talk to some of the wonderful, caring people who are trying to find homes for these dogs.

I told them I wanted to help out in some additional way, and since my Diesel portrait bopped its way around Facebook, I thought I'd try again to use my art skillz to get garner some more attention for another dog who needs a home. In this, case, a sweet little MinPin named Julie (who you can learn more about here).

I'm happy to report many of the dogs residing at the Baldwin Park shelter found homes over the weekend, but of course there are still more who didn't. So I'm gonna keep going, doing what I can...

Diesel

Special Saturday Post!

Diesel is one of the beautiful dogs that needs a good home, currently residing at the Baldwin Park, CA dog shelter.

My good pal Laura Menck posted his pic on her Facebook page, and his handsome, smiling face really spoke to me. So I worked up this little portrait, conveying the friendly attitude that clearly resides on his face. I only wish I could do more.

If you are in the position to open your home to a new dog, you can find more info about Diesel and many other deserving animals here.

Seagull

Like a lot of people, the various animals affected by the Gulf Oil Spill have been on my mind lately, so I wanted to do a simple little portrait of one of them, in this case a seagull.

When doing animal portraits, I try and keep the extra bells and whistles to a minimum, and just do a straightforward portrait. The closest I get to any sort of design element is the sky/cloud effect, drifting from blue to white, as the seagull floats gently across the frame.

From The Vault: Seal - 2003

During the summer of 2003, right after I had met Darlin' Tracy but was still living in my apartment, I was inspired to work on a bunch of animal-related pieces, and during a 2-3 week period I was cranking them out at a furious pace.

Thinking I might be able to sell them as original pieces of art, I decided to do most of them "the old-fashioned way"; meaning with cut paper, glue, and paint, instead of digitally. It meant filling the air with that nasty spray glue smell, but what the hell--what's a few lost brain cells in the cause of art?

I ended up with a pretty solid good to bad ratio with them--many of them I was very happy with (some of which can still be seen on my Animal Art page), some very good but not great, and some would never be seen again.

This one of the seal seemed to be in that middle category--a solid piece, but not one of the best, so it went into the vault, pretty much never to be seen again. But looking over it again now, I think its looks pretty good!


One footnote: In 2006, I was invited to hang some of my work as part of a small gallery showing in Philadelphia. Since most of the originals I had on me were the animal pieces, I just brought them. By the end of the show, I had sold all but two or three pieces, including this one! So obviously they struck some sort of chord.

Maybe I should start doing these again!

From The Vault: Berry - 2003

Even though I've already mentioned this on a couple of my blogs (here and here), I felt like I couldn't let this week's From The Vault segment pass without one last word about our cat, my little pal, Berry, who passed away last week.

This was my first attempt at doing a portrait of him, and I knew it would be a huge challenge, trying to convey all of the myriad colors that made up his beautifully detailed coat using cut paper.

But I gave it a shot, and while I was happy with it at the time, I can see now that it doesn't look that much like him. The pose and the look on his face are right, but its just too simple in terms of color to really do him justice.

Later, I did another piece, this time digitally, called Attack Cat, which to me is the definitive portrait of our little guy.

We miss him very, very much.

From The Vault: Purina Cat - 2001

I was commissioned to do this piece for an ad agency back in 2001; I don't even remember what it was for except it had some connection to Purina. The job eventually fell apart for reasons not having to do with me, so I got paid a kill fee for this and that was the end of it.

I'm posting this today because kitty cats are on my mind--there's a pack of about 15 feral cats living by a creek behind a 7-11 that Darlin' Tracy and I pass by every Thursday, and we've gotten into the habit of buying several cans of cat food and dumping them out so the cats can get to them.

We're not the only ones feeding them, since we see bowls of water and other traces of food around. Tonight was especially hard to see them all, since its still very cold (even though Spring is a week old), and it rained all day--seeing all those poor, cold kitty cats brave the elements to scarf up the food we dumped made us both sad.

We've thought about trying to capture some of them and getting them spayed, so at least they won't keep creating more homeless kitties, but since we already have a cat at home (and a very barky dog) we'd have no place to keep them, at least overnight.

Plus, how do you trap more than one feral cat at a time?

I know none of this has nothing to do with my artwork. Its just on my mind tonight.

Baby Penguin

This is a baby penguin, done in the same style as the baby peeps I had previously done as presents for Darlin' Tracy.

Every so often, for a birthday or anniversary or something, I like to do a piece of animal art for her, and they eventually end up framed and hanging on a wall somewhere. The first time I showed her the baby peep done in this sort of abstract style, she got so excited that I kept doing them just for her.

But I thought for Christmas, I'd shake it up a bit a try and different animal, but done in the same cut-paper (pieces of colored paper cut out and glued down) manner.

She's going to get it tonight for Christmas, so shhh! Don't tell her!