Birthday Fun

My birthday present from Mary was "Paint Your Pet" night at Wine & Design. The idea with this event is that you send them a photo of your pet, they put it on a canvas, and then you paint it (with help as needed).

I used a photo of Duncan taken in 2009. I didn't do Reyna because a friend of mine who is an actual painter is doing Reyna's portrait for a belated birthday present. Here's the photo blown up for painting (the wrinkles are from adhering the paper to the canvass, not from the actual picture).

I will admit to finding the whole process very stressful. Up until I hit a certain point, anyway. All of a sudden, I was able to relax and just paint without worrying about exactly how it looked. Which is good, cause Duncan has some seriously complicated coloring when you're trying to paint it just right. I joked to Mary that if I ever decided to paint Belle, she'd turn from a tortoiseshell into a completely black cat....

Mary painted her shepherd, Bruno, and I think she did a lovely job.

My expectations for this project were fairly low - I really just wanted to be able to recognize what I painted as a dog. I was very excited when a couple of other folks could tell that I'd painted a German Shepherd. You know, considering the last thing I painted was the catiary, I think I did a pretty good job.

Maybe we'll try Kodiak next month...