oil painting

She-Ra’s Good Day

Artwork, Dogs
SheRa

SheRa’s Good Day, 12″x12″ Oil on Canvas, Commission. 

It’s a mixed wet & sunny Thanksgiving here in the Pacific Northwest. Winter is here, though, not the GOT ice-wall type, rather, mostly very wet and colder. I wish everyone a great day with friends and family.

When I started working for Michaels Arts & Crafts as a Grumbacher/Chartpak painting instructor, our projects were divided up into four themes – Landscape, Seascape, Still Life and Floral. These I assume are the most popular subjects for their students. I would liken it to an “gateway subject” – which would “trick” you into learning how to paint the different techniques in the excercise.

It got me thinking, where did I fit in? What type of subject was my “gateway” subject? Well, for me, it’s animals. I am always going back to animals. Dogs in particular. That’s what more or less set me on a path of pet portraiture.

I love creating pet portraits. My hope is to capture a beautiful likeness of their pet. I work pretty much exclusively from photographs. Often the pet has passed, so this is especially touching.

She-Ra’s Good Day is a recent commission from a regular client. Not his dog, but he knew her well. I actually ended up combining two images to create the final painting. She appears to be soaking up the sun, taking a break on her walk on a lovely fall day. SheRa is a pittie, so of course, I had a lot of emotions come back from losing our Pete in March. However, this was, in a way, giving thanks for the gift he was to us, and that SheRa was to her family.

A happy holiday season to all – may you be merry and compassionate. And of course, support the arts.

Warmly, Dana

Brian & Millie – Why I paint dogs

Dogs

My focus was drawing in school. I didn’t start painting regularly until 2008. My preferred medium is oil paint. My preferred subjects are dogs. Or at least, one I keep going back to paint.

For 5 years, I was a Chartpak/Grumbacher painting instructor for the Michaels store in Moscow, ID. If you don’t know the program, it offers 2 hour classes where you paint a 9×12 canvas, from start to finish, in one sitting. The interesting part is how they divided up the subjects into four categories – Still Life, Floral, Landscape, Seascape.

So that got me thinking – what do I love? What to I want to paint? It took a couple months, but then I realized that my passion was painting animals. Specifically, dogs. I’ve been painting dogs (and everything else with four legs or wings) ever since. You can check out some of my pet portrait commissions in my page section – I’d love to paint your pet!

I spend waaaay too much time on social media. (Why yes, I am on FB and Instagram @DanaAldisStudio)  But, in my (weak) defense, that helped me make art and family connections as well as follow different animal rescues. One that caught my attention was Leave No Paws Behind, Inc. They take the last chance dogs, the ones that have been often horribly neglected, or dumped because they were too old. As frustrating as it is to watch, there is a silver lining, these dogs get the care they desperately needed.

 

Millie, 8×8 oil on canvas
Brian, 8×8 oil on canvas

Brian and Millie were two dogs I followed on FaceBook. Their page, The Life of Brian, is one of my favorites. Unfortunately, Millie passed away in 2016, and Brian also passed last month. They are terribly missed. I’m not sure how it happened, but in the last years, Brian became one of my muses. Dana (Brian’s “mom” takes great pictures)

WBrianandMillie

The Kiss, Brian & Millie. 16×24 Oil on Canvas

My tribute to Millie & Brian is this painting of the two of them sharing a tender moment, “The Kiss”. I offering prints of the painting, with 25% of the sale to a local rescue near where I live.  The 8″x12″ prints will be $45 plus shipping. They are fine art prints on beautiful printmaking paper.

And in non-art but all dog related news – introducing the new member of our “pack” – Dorothy the Goldendoodle. She’s 12 weeks old, not breed standard color, runt of the litter. She’s a little shy, and neither of us have had a puppy in our lives for over 15 years. All my friends expect to see paintings in the near future. 😉

Dorothy

Dorothy, The Goldendoodle @ 12 weeks

Below are links to some of the Animal Rescue pages I follow on FaceBook, as well as some of my favorite animal artist pages.

An Act of Dog – Artist Mark Barone created a a staggering 5500 shelter dogs https://www.facebook.com/anactofdog.org/

A great dog rescue organization – Big Fluffy Dog Rescue – also good for snarky commentary and imaginative breed descriptions https://www.facebook.com/bigfluffydogrescue/

And I have a lot more, but my FB page froze up (because I have so many liked pages) so I will post more later.