Pop Art Pet Unleashed

Archive for the ‘Clients’ Category

A large part of the country is currently dealing with crazy, crippling winter weather again this week. Here in Denver we haven’t had the pile up they’re getting on the east coast, but we have had a new layer of the white stuff at least every few days for what seems like forever. But this week we noticed something unexpected…

First we saw the first robin of spring, then we noticed several of his friends. They were all hopping around in the snow, presumably looking for a snack, making a mess. But it was about 22 degrees so apparently they didn’t get the groundhog’s memo about the several more weeks of winter to come.

Then the next day, quite early the next day in fact, we hear a sub-machine gun being fired just outside the window! Fortunately it turned out to be just a woodpecker, hammering away on the gutters. Somehow however, it doesn’t feel fortunate to have no break whatsoever between shoveling snow and trying to ward off woodpeckers, which is a battle we often fight but seldom win.

So we thought a reminder might be in order that birds are beautiful creatures who offer the world beautiful song. And especially in the case of these exotic beauties we’ve had the fortune to work with, they often provide a much needed splash of color in the world!

If you have feathered friends of your own, please keep in mind that we can create a custom bird portrait for you too! And if anybody has any tips for humanely keeping woodpeckers away, please share!

We have been long time believers in acupuncture for pets, as we saw how it helped Kylie. But you can click the image below to watch a video featuring an acupuncture demonstration on the lovely, Lucy, and an explanation of the benefits of acupuncture for your pet from two experts:

Plus, this story is kind of a two-for-one because the star of the video, Lucy, is also a friend and one of our favorite clients!

We knew she was a beauty.. now she’s a star, and a very lucky girl to be so well cared for!

We are never afraid to pressure our clients into taking new, better photos of their pet for their custom pet portrait. Sometimes they get frustrated, which is understandable since dogs and cats make really lousy models. But we always tell them, “The better the photo the better the portrait.”

We explain it is not for our benefit, it is for theirs. After all they have purchased a significant, sentimental piece of art that they are going to have forever.

As an example of what our artist can achieve with a really high quality photo check out Toby. Current client, Cathy, had really great photos of Toby for his Pop Art Pet portrait. Click on the thumbnail below to see a larger version – the original was actually huge, which is also a huge help to us.

The lighting is great, the photo is perfectly focused, and so detailed you can see individual hairs. And take a look at the excellent results our artist achieved as a result.

Look how much detail we were able to maintain?

Click here to see all of Toby’s proofs.

So, if you order one of our custom portraits of your pet and we ask you to please try to take better pictures, please don’t take it personally. We just want every portrait we do, to be the best it can be, and to do that we need the best possible photos. Besides, as we always point out, its never a bad thing to have more pictures of your pet!

Did you know we have a whole site dedicated to doing people portraits?

We recently helped create an awesome anniversary gift for a lovely little family by transforming a simple photo into something special.

We did a simple background and a soft technique to design this traditional style portrait. But we can also do Pop Art of you or your family for that whimsical Warhol-esque look.

Just check out Pop Art Go and consider art that is uniquely you!

At the end of last week we finally had to suspend accepting orders for Christmas. So now, as promised we have made a donation to Best Friends Animal Society. And thanks to those of you who have ordered custom pet portraits since Thanksgiving it was a nice generous one..

We couldn’t have said it better outselves! Thank you again to our wonderful clients who through the love of their pets, have allowed us to help homeless pets at this special time.

We encourage you to make a donation of your own to Best Friends to help them continue the amazing work they do to rescue animals in need.

Recently within a couple of days we got an order for a Pop Art portrait of a horse, then a goat; and then when we got an order for Pedro the burro we thought maybe we should start a new business.. popartfarm.com! Then when we got photos of Pedro we got an even bigger surprise – Pedro isn’t an actual, real, live burro, he’s a little burro figurine!

He also happens to be a mascot of sorts for a couple of best friends, and he even has his own MySpace page!

Sherry, our client, was almost embarrassed about ordering a portrait of an inanimate object but we were intrigued, we had to know the story. So here is Pedro the burro’s story according to Sherry:

I am originally from Detroit, I moved to Leadville, CO in November 2006 to buy and run a bed and breakfast. I am from the big city, the concrete jungle as I call it and moving here was a big culture shock but definitely one of my better decisions. I love it here and I’m always writing and calling home to tell people how different (weird) things are up here at 10,000′. One day last summer I called my best friend (Jill) and told her that there was a guy walking down main street with a burro on a leash, just like a dog. I was cracking up because it was so odd, but so normal for Leadville. Jill said, what the hell is a burro? Which led to a discussion and her googling the word burro. Well I figured that since she had never seen one and didn’t know what one was, I needed to get her one. So I found Pedro in one of the shops in town. Jill came to visit at thanksgiving and before she left I hid (stuffed) him in her luggage. I didn’t hear anything for weeks and I thought surely she had unpacked her suitcase and found him. Alas, my question was answered when I got him back in my Christmas present with his own passport. Well now the game was on. Pedro has had many adventures this year, he went car shopping to find a car to drive to Mexico and protest the making of burro-itos, which he thinks is a conspiracy to make burros extinct. This spring he traveled back to Michigan and visited all his friends and hid out in a closet. Then he found his way back to Leadville this summer.
The portrait I ordered from you is a combination 30th birthday present and house warming present for Jill. She just bought her first house. I figured a picture of her favorite ass was absolutely appropriate for the occasion.

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Lately, it’s been like “Old Macdonald’s Farm” around here! In the same week we started working on a custom portrait of a lovely little filly named Zoey, we got an order for King Louis, II, a GOAT!!

Because he is our very first goat we just had to ask Ashley, our client, the back story. Apparently King Louis, II is the love of her little girl’s life and the portrait is a Christmas gift for her. Here’s the whole story in Ashley’s own words:

“At 5, [my daughter] sat on Santa’s lap at the mall and asked for a goat–said that was all she wanted. This was the first I had heard of this, and I had already purchased numerous toys to put out by the tree. So what does any good mother do? Find a way to get her a goat! Called around town, found a goat, and purchased it. We kept him in a nearby barn until Christmas morning. After my daughter awoke, she went screaming through the house, woke us up and said she heard a baby crying outside. There he was, in all his perfect white splendor…King Louis the I she called him. I have never seen a child so smitten. After falling in love with him…and I mean the entire family, Louis passed away on New Year’s eve. No one is sure what actually was wrong with him, and my daughter’s heart was broken. I didn’t know how to explain death to a 5 year old, and I didn’t want too.

Some of the towns people from our church heard about what happened and were devastated for her. We had a couple that called and offered a baby goat to us but said that he wasn’t quite ready to leave his mother. So again, what does any good mother do? We took the mama goat Lucy and her baby (now King Louis the II) into our home and introduced them to the rest of the family–including the stray cat (Tiger) that came up after Hurricane Katrina, our two yellow labs–Belle and Moose, the animal I rescued from a shelter named Copper, and our little diva long-haired dachshund named Dolce. Boy, did we have our hands full.

King Louis the II survived. Lucy went back to her original owners. And my daughter feels that she is the luckiest little girl in the world! Louis has been taught how to slide down her slide–standing up. Then she hides with a cup of corn, shakes it and Louis comes looking for her (their version of hide-n-seek), and he climbs the rock climber on the side of her swing set and sits in the clubhouse while she puts bonnets on his head and pretends to play house. Did I mention that he packs with our labs? We are thinking of getting him a partner because lately Louis has been having an identity crises and believes he’s a dog, too!

King Louis is very pampered. He has his on mini-barn, tons of hay, is spoiled to protein and corn—so he doesn’t graze like normal goats as much. He gets a bath and smell good animal perfume, which he hates. We let him out on the rest of the farm every weekend when we are at home and can keep an eye on him. We don’t want him to eat something poisonous (he doesn’t have “meadow smarts”). Louis still doesn’t understand the single file line thing that the other goats do, but has tons of female and male goat friends. But at the end of the day, he will cry to be back with our daughter and our labs.

Our daughter is an only child, and I am very lucky to have her. King Louis the II is more than a best friend, he is a family member–the second child of sorts, that I could never have.”

We are flattered to have been able to capture Louis’ spirit in the vivid, Pop Art Portrait!

Coming soon.. the story of Pedro – our first Pop Art “burro.”

We’ve been especially busy this summer with even more multiple pet projects than usual! Almost everybody has wanted at least two pets in their portraits, like adorable Airedales Chief & Raya,

And this retro cat portrait of Reggie & Zeke

In addition there were Hachiko & Zoey, Ilka & Tovarish, and you already saw Boomer & Bonnie, just to name a few.

And recently we’ve moved beyond the dynamic duos to some terrific trios. Like these three traditional designs of Sophia, Willie, and Bambino.

Plus check out the Pop Art portraits of sisters, Katie, Shula, and Trina.

So we’ve had an action packed summer so far and love that so many happy households have so many multiple happy pets!

Obviously many, if not all, of our clients are art lovers as well as animal lovers, so occasionally we get special requests to emulate a favorite artist.

For example not long ago we were asked to do a portrait of this adorable Basenji, Tucker. The custom pet portrait was a gift for Tucker’s dad who is a big fan of Van Gogh. This is what our artist came up with.

Not bad, huh?

Then there’s Mojo, a happy boy reportedly always in motion! His dad wanted us to design a portrait as a gift for his mom, and he wanted us to know that she loves the works of James Michalopoulos, a celebrated New Orleans based artist.

He was hoping we could just use the same sort of vibrant colors and similar texture for his Traditional style pet portrait of Mojo.

We hope his mom likes our use of colors and texture too!

We actually appreciate it when our clients have specific ideas and special requests, it gives us direction and often provides us with new and exciting challenges.

Please contact us if you have a favorite artist and want to know if we can do a portrait of your pet in a similar style.

A great “Sanctuary Story” from Best Friends Animal Sanctuary in Utah recently involved one of our favorite clients, Marissa.

It seems that a woman named Macey was hiking around in southern Utah, not far from Best Friends, looking for Native American artifacts. What Macey found instead was a dog badly in need of help. Ava’s leg was caught in a coyote trap. It seemed like Ava had been there at least a day.

In fact, Ava was lucky indeed that Macey showed up at all. This particular spot was at least five miles from the closest home. Macey freed Ava from the trap and then spent a week and a half trying to track down Ava’s family. Ava wasn’t wearing a collar, and no one responded to fliers and newspaper ads. Meanwhile, the vets taking care of Ava thought she would need to lose the injured leg. Macey was not in a position to care for Ava long-term. So after it became obvious that nobody would claim Ava, the pup came to Best Friends to heal. They were of course willing to find or provide her with a forever home and they managed to save her leg! Now she melts hearts on contact!

Then the story gets even better for Ava and for our regular client Marissa, who randomly came across the article about Ava and contacted Best Friends Animal Society/Dogtown. Marissa had spent a week at Best Friends as a volunteer in February so she just contact them to ask how this beautiful golden was doing. Then according to Marissa, “They asked if I was interested in adoption – there were several applicants ahead of me, but I was welcome to fill out an application and be placed on a waiting list. I went ahead an applied; however I didn’t hold my breath.”

Sometime later she was told that the applicants before her had been eliminated as potential new homes for Ava. She was now first on the list and that she and Chloe her lovely Golden that we did a portrait of last year, had passed their home check. “I was shocked! I would need to wait 1-3 months before she could come home due to the uncertainty of her medical condition. At this point amputation was still an option and Ava was fighting a nasty infection.”

Finally Marissa received an email that Ava was released from medical hold and she was free to pick her up and take her home, they asked how soon she could make the 600 mile journey from here in Denver.

Marissa also told us, “To my amazement, I was also notified that since she arrived at Best Friends, Ava’s story was being followed by the film crew for National Geographic Channels’ program “Dogtown” – stay tuned for her episode – scheduled to air this fall.”

So Ava has had quite a reversal of fortune, from being caught in a coyote trap to being the star of a television show and soon to be the subject of a Pop Art Pet portrait of her own!

To date Marissa has comissioned us to do five different custom pet portraits as gifts for friends and family, then finally one for herself of her Chloe, and we are currently working on yet another portrait for yet another gift for another friend for Marissa! Don’t you wish she was your friend too?!