New portrait: Homer, the jet-setting Golden Retriever

After a brief stint in customs, Homer’s portrait made it safely all the way to Milan, Italy! And now that Vanessa has unwrapped her belated birthday gift from her (very thoughtful) husband, I can finally unveil Homer’s gorgeous, larger than life mug. All nine square feet of it:

Homer | 36 x 36in | Jan 2010

Hi Aimee,
Thank you so much for your good humor, your patience and your assistance in getting ‘Homer’ to us safe and sound. It has been a pleasure to ‘work’ with you over the past couple of months. Most of all, thanks for your hard work and artistry in producing such a magnificent portrait. When I saw the photograph of the portrait which you sent to me I thought it was great. When I saw the actual portrait itself it was really fantastic. – Bill

Dear Aimee,
Thanks from the bottom of my heart for one of the most wonderful birthday presents I could have wished for. The ‘new Homer’ will be treasured as a family heirloom. (I hope the ‘old Homer’ doesn’t get too jealous!) – Vanessa

Homer started out like all my portraits: on the floor.

Homer's humble beginnings

Then up on the easel he went.

There's that grid again (if you can see it)

One of my fav parts of painting: the initial painted sketch

The final background will be green, so in goes red first

Darkest areas go in first

Homer's Joker phase. (Purple and green.)

Warmer tones going in

First actual Golden Retriever-ish hues

Let there be light!

End of Joker phase

Warm coat colors go in. Homer's starting to look more like Homer.

A greenish background will compliment Homer's coat color really well.

Ended up chosing a bluish-green background. He's almost there...

Homer's final portrait. Signed & ready for it's voyage to Milan.

And here’s his portrait is arriving at Bill & Vanessa’s front door…finalmente! (All images compliments of Homer’s blog.

It's like he knows what's in there

The always important grass smell check

Awww. Good dog.

A-hem...how long do I have to sit here?

Birthday girl says time to crack it open!

Happy client and well-behaved (if not bored) Homer

One more look before taking it inside

Safe & sound: Homer, Homer's portrait and the photo I worked from

If you’d like to get to know Homer a little better, check out his blog. He’s always up to something.

And if you have your heart set on nine square feet of your own dog’s mug (or two or 20), check out my website www.aimeehoover.com and send me an email.

Thanks, as always, for reading.

-Aimée

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To view dozens of dog (and a few cat) portraits, please enjoy a tour of my online gallery at www.aimeehoover.com.

The Bonnie Hunt Show winner!

If you’ve been lucky enough to miss my blasts of shameless self-promotion about my Bonnie Hunt Show appearance, I’m sorry to report your luck has run out. Here’s the clip (I’m up after the third infomercial spoof):

And here’s the adorable winner again, Sadie! Her cute mug was submitted by Tricia Dudley from Garland, TX:

Sadie, a gorgeous pup rescued from the pound

Why I picked Sadie
Bonnie asked me on the show why I picked Sadie out of all (just under 1000) entries. I’m glad most of my answer was edited out because I was babbling. Now that I can string a few coherent sentences together from the comfort of my home, “Well, thanks for asking Bonnie! I picked her because…

• First and foremost, Tricia submitted a very LARGE (read: hi-resolution) photo that clearly showed all of Sadie’s little details. It had lots of visual information for me to work with.
• Her head is cocked to one side, like she’s listening to her name being called (I like that).
• She’s making eye contact with the viewer/camera.
• She has a little bit of a furrowed brow.
• Her photo has an emotive quality: it’s heartwarming even if you don’t know her.

All these elements together equal a great photo. And great photos make for great portraits.

Color correcting Sadie
Tricia and I were emailing after she won and she mentioned that Sadie’s fur color was a tad off in the photo she submitted. Specifically, that Sadie’s fur color was warmer in real life that that photo depicted. So she sent me this photo as a closer representation of Sadie’s true coat color:

Geesh, what a handsome girl.

I’m really glad she did this because I want the portrait to be as true to life as possible. So with Tricia’s other photo as a reference, I came up with this color adjustment (thank you, Photoshop). This is also the format I’ll be using for Sadie’s portrait. I hope she has the wall space because it’s going to be a substantial 36h” x 32w” canvas:

Sadie, warmed up.

I’m hoping to have the opportunity to “unveil” the final portrait on the show with Bonnie. Maybe Tricia can Skype in and see it live! That would be so cool. Will keep you posted.

Thanks, as always, for reading.

-Aimée

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To view dozens of dog (and some cat) portraits, please enjoy a tour of my online gallery at www.aimeehoover.com.

The Bonnie Hunt Show

As someone whose occupation necessitates mass amounts of solitary time, walking to Starbucks during the work week qualifies as an actual “outing” (seriously).

So you can imagine my excitement when I got to be a part of The Bonnie Hunt Show this week…cartwheels!

I’m not even going to try to act cool about this whole thing and delete all my italics and exclamation points. It was a complete thrill!!! And the cast, crew – basically everyone we came in contact with – were all just as friendly and welcoming as Bonnie herself.

But even with three exclamation points, it’s hard to truly express how 1.) surreal it was and 2.) how grateful I feel to have even had this experience, considering what I do for a living. I mean, really – who invites dog artists to be on talk shows? Exactly.

The show airs this Monday, January 18th, 2010. You can check out Bonnie’s website for exact show times in your area.

In the meantime, here’s a few behind the scenes pics from zee best outing I have had since my last latté…

Parking spot just steps from the studio door...sweet.

I stole this.

Trying to act cool in my big dressing room.

NOT trying to act cool.

In hair & makeup. Elizabeth (right) and Kay (not in frame) were awesome.

Last hike of the jeans before being mic'd up.

Thanks, as always, for reading. (And for watching on Monday!)

-Aimée

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Like to see more dog and cat paintings? Visit the online gallery at www.aimeehoover.com

2009: Twitter portraits in review

Whaddah year
When I held the first twitter portrait contest back in March of 2009, it wasn’t a portrait giveaway, per se. It was just a request for dog photos for a little painting experiment I was conducting. I wanted to see if I could paint a dog “study” in 140 minutes.

Just one of my new followers sent me a photo. Needless to say, he won.

But my experiment quickly morphed into a monthly custom dog portrait give away on twitter, resulting in 2300 followers, some nice press from my fav dog magazine, and a whole other portrait contest on the Bonnie Hunt Show. (Stay tuned for that!)

But there’s more
One of the best things that’s happened as a result of the contests is that winners have “paid the freebie forward,” per the contest rules which requires doing something nice for someone (or something) else. My wonderful winners have dontated to the ASPCA, given away custom artwork themselves, and even helped to raise funds for a rescue dog’s leg surgery.

And the other best thing is that I have made some great new friends I wouldn’t have met otherwise: friends with a wicked sense of humor and a love for animals as strong as my own. That’s worth 9 free paintings in my book. Heck, that’s worth 50.

So here’s a look back at all nine 2009 twitter portraits and winning photos. We’ll start with Makai, the first portrait winner, and end with Tallulah, who’s portrait’s coming soon!

Enjoy.

Makai - Winner #1

Mackenzie - Winner #2

Cali - Winner #3

Speck - Winner #4

Lulabelle - Winner #5

Kingsley - Winner #6

maddie - Winner #7

Bud - Winner #8

Tallulah - Winner #9

Thanks as always for reading. Hope you are enjoying the fresh slate of the new year!

And every day for that matter…

-Aimée

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Visit the online gallery at www.aimeehoover.com

Surprise Xmas Shih Tzu

Samantha | 14 x 18 | Acrylic on canvas | Dec 2009

Xmas eve with the Johnstons
Every holiday season, my husband and I visit the Johnston’s home on Christmas Eve. They are dear friends of my husband’s family and have hosted an open house on that evening for 30 or 40 years. They are fantastic, welcoming people. As are the rest of the families that attend, without fail, every year.

They’ve had a long standing tradition of taking photos of each family every year and displaying all these photos in the family room. Each year you can see everyone growing up, eventually getting married, having kids of their own, then watching their kids grown up, etc. All on display on this photo wall.

When I first attended their party back when S and I were just dating (about 14 years ago), his family and I were arranging ourselves for that year’s photo and I ended up square in the middle. Mr Johnston, camera in hand, ran up to me, moved me by my shoulders to the edge of the line up and declared, “We’ll put ya on the end in case we have to cut you out of the picture later! HA!” Apparently, there was a lot of turnover in the photos over the years.

Then one year, after S and I had been dating for quite a while (and were receiving our share of “when’s the wedding date??”), we attended the party alone without S’s folks. Again, Mr. Johnston was about to snap our photo when he paused, lowered the camera and proclaimed that we were “missing something.” He darted out of the room and returned carrying a 6 year old kid and thrust her into my arms. He took the picture.

Surprise present
Needless to say, I adore this family and I thought it was time to do something special for them, aside from baking yet another batch of cookies. We’ve eaten their tasty food, drank their booze and enjoyed the warmth of their company every year for almost 15 years. So I painted Samantha, their cute Shih Tzu, for them as a surprise gift and gave it to them at the end of the party this year. No unveiling pics this time but here’s Samantha’s stage by stage painting process…

Samantha gets sketched in

Laying out her face plus a little warm colored under-painting

Fluffy warm colored fur and darker, brown-ish areas go in

She's starting to form on the canvas. Ignoring the background for now...

Now she's getting fluffy!

Continuing to record the smaller details, plus the background goes in.

Final portrait

Hopefully this entitles me to drink their booze for another 15 years. Maybe that should be my photo next year.

Happy new year!

-Aimée

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Visit the online gallery at www.aimeehoover.com