Custom portraits of four-legged family members
Original animal paintings
— from fauna to Fido —
by artist Aimée Hoover
When I was a kid, our next door neighbor had a huge trampoline. I made a beeline to that thing every day after school. Sometimes the neighbor kids were there too, but more often than not it was actually their Great Dane, Ramona (yes, Ramona), that was privy to my expert acrobatics…such as falling off. [...]
The elves have been busy in the studio this Christmas! Above is Gypsy, the first Christmas portrait to be delivered this December, and the third portrait for my fabulous client, Wendy. (We had worked together on her other pups, Scout and Gracie a year prior.) Sadly, sweet Gypsy passed a couple of years ago and [...]
This blog post’s initial draft contained about 9,700 words. Then I realized that you, like me, might be short on time during this holiday season. So I decided to muzzle myself and cut it down to just the essentials. Here they are: 1. Above is Cole, a incredibly smart, sweet Labrador who happens to be [...]
Getting together with my clients and “subjects” to snap photos for their portrait is truly one of my favorite parts of my job. (Meeting awesome people and running around with their dogs is a good day in my book.) But the reality is that over 60% of my clients come to me after their beloved [...]
Sparkle & Annie After an impressive six months of secrecy (not to mention patience), my client Elissa was finally able to surprise her partner Babs with custom portraits of their pups, Annie and Sparkle. It took a village, but the big surprise went off without a hitch… “Thanks so much for personally delivering the pictures [...]
I love Google maps. They’ve saved me gallons of gasoline that I would have otherwise wasted reading my Thomas Guide from 1987. But until recently I didn’t realize you could do all sort of cool things with them in additional to getting directions. I mean besides checking out where my competition lives. After playing around [...]
BIG small dogs There are times when my portrait subjects are quite small, as dogs go. And it usually makes sense to use a small canvas. But sometimes I sit in my studio, picturing a small canvas for these tiny critters, and it just doesn’t feel right. So I try the next size up. And [...]
And I do mean finally. Out with the old As I began to writing this post, I didn’t actually know how long it’d been since I re-designed my online gallery. So I looked it up…EIGHT YEARS. That’s three or four computers (and as many cell phones) ago! Needless to say, it’s been long overdue. I [...]
Like everyone one else I know, I’m a total sucker for Golden Retrievers. So I was quite excited when Heather contacted me to paint her dog, Teva Jo. Heather found out about my twitter portrait contests through her friend/my twitter follower, Janet, who is also the fabulous and friendly veterinary medicine guide on about.com. A [...]
Taking photos of my “subjects” is one of my favorite things about the pet portrait process. Especially with dogs as awesome and handsome as Rickee. Thought I’d share a few snapshots from our recent session this past weekend on a beautiful day in the backyard. Hope you enjoy them! And he was right. On to [...]