Wow! Talk about making my spirits soar to the sky, and put a permanent smile on my face.
This amazing Blog “Tack n’ Talk” featuring all kinds of fabulous and inspiring Horse related topics honored my work and I in their latest Post. I hope you get to visit them often because there is bountiful knowledge to be learned from them.
My Career at Shoebox Greetings Cards, Inc at Hallmark Cards started right after graduating from college. I worked at Shoebox for 3 years and then I Freelanced for a variety of Greeting Card Companies. I stopped creating Greeting Cards when I started the Maggie’s Angels portraits, but now I want to create a card line that will compliment my pet portraits. This is a project that I can work on this summer as we travel in our RV across the USA. Here are a few ideas, of what the cards could look like.
Here is Gracie & Sophia, two very sweet kitties that I painted for a client.
These are cut out of wood, I gessoed & painted them in acrylics. It is same process I do for my portraits. They came out so cute! She is going to place them near the doorway that goes into their little cat room. It will be so fun for them to welcome people into their Lair.
Before these two kitties left to their new home, they checked out a few of the spots around our house, and of course I took a few photos. While they waited for their new mommy to pick them up, they sat on my desk watching the “Bird TV” as I call it, which is the bird feeders outside my studio window which get fabulous bird visitors throughout the day! ;)
Here’s what I’m currently working on, I’m finally doing paintings of my own animals. Angel the Westie, Sky the Aussie and Luna my horse, the goats are coming in the next batch. They are all at the beginning stages of the painting process, but you can still see the personality starting to come out.
The next picture is all the new canvases that I’ve prepared. I started adding colored backgrounds as my base instead of the white backgrounds to see if I like working like that, I’m not convinced I like it yet, but its fun experimenting!
Last year, I participated in a Fundraiser for the Humane Society called Barkitecture, and we created a Dog House were I did all these drawings of dogs & cats and cut them out of wood and painted them with acrylics. I created a lot of them, but I left some of them out because there were just to many. I decided to work on them and they will sit in doorways around my house greeting you as you pass them by. They are so cute, specially the Dachshund who is up on his little hind legs ready to greet you and to be petted as you enter my studio.
In this picture you can see the other paintings I’m currently working on. I started 8 paintings all in one day, and I’m working on them according to the mood I’m in. Its kind of terrific to go from one painting to the other as I wait for layers of paint to dry. You can also see in the photo the ceramic platters I’ve done in the past. I stopped doing them when I started Maggie’s Angels, but I did love it and sold all of it except these pieces which I could not part with. I still have some greenware ceramic pieces that are waiting to be painted which I might do in the near future.
The next 3 pictures are about my Illustrations. I was the Art Director for Shoebox Greeting Cards in Hallmark Cards, Inc. I love this industry and often miss it very much. I did a lot of freelance work for Greeting Card Companies, but once I started Maggie’s Angels I stopped. Well now a days, I bring my sketchbook with me and while I wait to pick up the kids from school & all of their after school activities they are involved in. While I wait, I come up with ideas. I’m developing a card line that will feature animals and whimsical characters. I’m hoping to work on it during the summer while we travel and hopefully reveal it later this year on cafepress and see how they do. I work with pen & ink & watercolors so its compact and an easy medium to travel with.
I wanted to show you this little sculpture I bought of this Angel horse. Well it didn’t look like that when I bought it, in fact it was the color of the base he is laying on. One morning I woke up and decided to paint him just like my horse Luna and I love how he came out. I hate to admit this but I often paint over items I find that look like my animals but don’t have the same markings. Don’t tell the Breyer Horse folks but I did that to one of their beautiful horses as you can see from the picture on your right. In the movie Spirit, the Indian horse Rain looked a lot like Luna except she had a blonde mane so I changed her a little bit. I did the same thing when I found these 2 cute little goats and I painted them to look like my little Pygmy-Nigerian goats Trixie & Lightning. I have a lot of fun with it, and I place them around the house were everytime I look at them they make me smile.
I hope this gives you a little glimpse of what I’ve been up to in the last 3 weeks, along with everything else in our lives. Sometimes its tough to fit it all in, but when I get these creative bursts I really take advantage of them. :)
Now you can order a set of five Maggie’s Angels Bookmarks. Each durable heavy card stock bookmark is printed on both sides and measures 2.375″ x 8″. Protective UV gloss coating assures lasting quality. The bookmarks are valued at $2 each. However, the complete set of five bookmarks (valued at $10) is only $5 Total …and shipping and handling (in U.S.) is FREE!
I have a lot of people ask me about what art materials I use to create my pet portraits, and in recent post I showed how I prepare my wood canvases, and about the palette I use. Today I will speak about the acrylic paints I tend to use most often.
I Love Liquitex Acrylics, I’ve used them as long as I have been an artist. I love the texture and pigment the paints consistently have. I use all the different types of consistencies that Liquitex makes. The Heavy Body line, I use for backgrounds and finishing touches, the regular tubes for practically everything, and the Concentrated liquid acrylics for background colors and detail work. I also love the Winsor & Newton Finity line of acrylics cause I find them to be thicker in consistency. My choices in the paints usually comes down to the colors . My technique is a combination of a watercolor layering effect with areas of thicker more oil paint type of strokes. That is why I love working with Acrylics, you have the flexibility to manipulate the medium to have the incredible unique qualities that an artist style and imagination can come up with.
One thing I do all the time is to look for deals specially since paints wether acrylics, oils, watercolors, guage, or any other medium can get pretty pricy. Michael’s Craft store has 40% of regular price items in most Sunday’s paper, plus they also have 50% coupons on occasions, I take full advantage of those coupons even splurging some times. Hobby Lobby also has some 40-50% coupons and I look for those every week cause any little bit helps.
My multi talented husband, Kent Weakley, has outdone himself this time by creating a brand new introduction to my time lapse videos. Kent is a Graphic Designer, owner of BlueSky Graphic Communication, Inc. He creates major full fledge campaigns for clients which include all aspects of his talents, from Photography, to web design, to media designs, to logo,to video, to book design, he can do it all. I am fortunate enough to have this major talent be my partner for life. Talk about fringe benefits. It is because of him that I am able to take Maggie’s Angels to the next level. My company is not just about the pet portraits it is about the connections I make creating these special paintings for my clients. Kent is able to showcase and create an image for my Angels on my website, blog, Youtube, Twitter, in my Etsy Shop, my prints, my bookmarks, and all the other projects that come up. If you are looking to take your company, whatever it happens to be, to a professional cohesive level contact Kent and watch your sales skyrocket.
For this video of the Yorkie named Sophie, I decided to talk about creating my portraits, transferring them and the process I go through. I hope it is helpful and fun to watch. I would love to hear what you think. Thanks for watching :)
The Silver River is considered to be one of the most beautiful rivers in this world. The water is crystal clear, the plants are is lush and abundant, and there are all sorts of critters running around for you to see. We had the pleasure to enjoy it on Saturday April 4th, it was a beautiful sunny day. The best part is that we just happen to live near it and are able to go any time we want. How lucky are we!
We saw so many different kinds of birds, turtles, fish even the Rhesus Monkeys gave us a fun show to watch, but the number one animal you see thriving in this River is the Alligator. We saw 22 gators that day, I’m sure there were a ton more that we didn’t spot, but we knew they were there. All different size gators were basking in the warm sun or hiding among the water lilies.
We came across this big boy of a gator camouflaged perfectly among the water plants, and I was able to get my little point & shoot camera and capture this great reptile in action. Hope you enjoy the video and the pictures as much as we enjoyed the day!
