Ahhh, pet portrait work. A real love/hate relationship for me, as some of you know.

Let me just say: as much as I love being able to share my artwork, there is a constant underlying stress when it comes to custom work like this. Especially when it’s dealing with peoples’ pets. Sometimes I think people may love their pets more than they love their own children (I mean, I can’t blame them…for 7 years my best friend was a guinea pig).

click on the photos to enlarge them

I’ve been fortunate enough to have most of my customers be wonderful, understanding, and appreciative of my work, but once in a while I’ll get an absolute lemon in the mix. One who doesn’t seem to understand that a painted portrait is not a direct photograph or perfect replica of their pet…who I’ve never met…and they only sent three grainy pictures of.

There have been a couple people who’ve been so terrible that I’ve simply canceled and refunded their orders just to shut them up, and I have to admit that those few interactions have made me a little tense when I send along the photos of the finished portraits for customers’ approval now. Even though that’s a huge overreaction, since most people are just really happy and excited to get them, and I’m always willing to make any reasonable edits to portraits when they’re requested!

Of course, when I speak of the lemons in the group, I’m not referring to the customer who purchased these three adorable 3″x4″ portraits (possibly my favorite size portrait to paint!). This order came from a sweet repeat customer who always orders the most meaningful portraits for herself and her friends.

But regardless of how much I like this person, I was 2/3 done with this order when I started to believe that I had lost my artistic talent. Completely. I could no longer paint. That was it. 25 years of artistry and it was gone in one day. One day.

When I tell you that I damn near cried.

Dramatic, I know. But have you ever sat down and worked on something and hours tick on by and it still looks like absolute garbage!? That was me when I started this white dog’s portrait…twice.

It didn’t help that my work got interrupted before I was finished, and this dog sat half-done and looking absolutely horrible on my desk for days. It just stared up with its blank eyes. Haunting me.

I wanted to simply throw it away, but of course, my family told me that I was being ridiculous. And eventually I had the time to sit down and finish it, and it all came together in the end. As everyone told me it would. But like I said before: there’s pressure. Because this was someone’s beloved dog, and they paid me to create something special for them! Maybe all of this stems from the fact that sometimes it still surprises me that people value my work in this way.

Here I am, with hundreds of 5-star reviews in my shop telling me how much people appreciate my work, and I still find myself feeling the ever-lurking imposter syndrome try to sneak in. Absolute nonsense.

Over the years I’ve simply come to the conclusion that if I could make money by donating art to great causes (like Barn Sanctuary’s auction), I would. It’d be all creativity and no pressure — i.e. perfection.

But until I find myself in a position where I’m not waiting for each paycheck to hit to pay my bills, I will be painting your pets. Because I know you love them. And I love that for you.

(to see more of my pet portraits you can take a peek at this post, or visit my Etsy shop here!)

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