Latest Dog Portrait in progress

Still working on this one, but he's almost finished. The original background was an inside shot in a very dark room. I have one more order to do....a German Sheppard.

The website was up and live in just a couple of hours. I can't stress how easy this was to do and how happy I am with the results. You can also go back and make changes or add new pictures or pages and they show up immediately. Take a look and give it a try yourself... my new website

That was easy!

I just finished building the new site and it was so easy.....just drag and drop. It won't be visible right away...they say give it a day or two. The free website builder and hosting weebly.com

A few changes

I'm sure some of you will be interested in this......I discovered a new website for building free websites with free hosting. Not sure yet if there's a catch, but I am there now building up a site. I believe it did say no advertisements which is great and they also have google adsense (but you share the earnings with weebly). I've never been really happy having my portfolio in a blog format, so I'm going to see if this works for me.
Also note that if you have karenhetzer dot com bookmarked (or a favorite) on your computer, that will be going to the new site and www.muralclassestogo.com will be for the blog. This should happen by the end of today or sometime tomorrow.
The website building site is weebly.com

I LOVE THIS!

See more of Amy Flynn's creations here

WHERE'S THE MURAL WORK??!!!!!!

Why are cats so much harder to do?

I spent two days working on this portrait of a cat....I'll set it aside for now and work on the other one I have to do. Dogs seem so much easier to do.
Maybe its the size that makes a difference. This one is 5"x 7" while the dogs I did below were 8"x 10". Harder to get the detail in small paintings.
This is the painting obviously....the colors are actually a little darker than they show here.
Here's the original photograph I worked from.

MURAL INSTRUCTION

I'm once again offering private mural instruction for just beginning artists. Instruction will be given in my home located in Lake Worth, FL. Instruction will be for five days, seven hours each day (one hour for lunch by the pool) and the cost?.......a recession friendly $750 (limited time only)....everything provided. Scheduling is flexible.....can be five days straight or broken up into weekends. Contact for more information.
STUDENT AT WORK

HOW COOL

That's my work on the wall :-)

I think I'm done with this one...8"x 10"portrait #2 of 5. I had a very difficult picture to work from, but it was the only photo they had. I will study it for a day or two.

Art Couture

An artist friend of mine Janet Nelson, just sent me a link to a company iconshoes.com that is printing art on leather goods.
Its like they took what Cafepress and Zazzle allows you to do and turned it into art couture.
Tote by PixDezines on Zazzle.....
Shoes by AferrellApparel on Zazzle.....

Killing Time On A Lazy Sunday Morning

I've been jumping from blog to blog to blog this morning. I landed on this one that held my attention for quite a while...its a fun craft oriented blog with tons of links to others...grab the coffee and set a while :-)

Dog Portrait Progress

Need To Get My Groove Back

I'm going through one of those...'I can't seem to get inspired'... phases. I hate when that happens. I did catch myself feeling a glimmer of excitement though when I found this all wood screen for $15 today that was screaming 'paint me! paint me!'.
This smooth side will absolutely get a mural.
Ignore the Southwestern styled side, I'm going to see if I can't remove those little bits of wood in all the corners, and most likely each of the 12 sections will get a painting....haven't decided on a theme yet. I'm open to suggestions :-) And it will be for sale.
As I was riding through my neighborhood, on my way home, I had to stop and take a picture of this tree. The first time I saw one of these I thought someone was playing a joke. Those tubular things hanging from it can get much larger than the ones here. Its the craziest looking thing.
Its called a sausage tree. The fruits are not edible, the seeds are poisonous.
This is how they start out.
I got three new portrait clients today. This mood of mine better pass quickly.

Haven't had much to blog about lately.
Today I'm going back to a home to add some more random embellishments of palm fronds around some windows and doorways.
I finally started working on one of two dog portraits that were commissioned about a month ago....they are to be Christmas gifts for the clients friend. Still have layers to go, but here's the progress so far.
Original photo:
Painting progress:
Lots to do/correct.
Also been playing around painting miniature paintings (2"x3")