Curious Mood Boards

I have been busy this summer freshening up my Etsy shop Curious Portraits in preparation for the holiday season. I make a habit of reviewing the product shots in the shop from time to time which I find has a similar effect of re-arranging the art on the walls. It makes everything look new! I have been very inspired by the many beautiful Mood Boards I see on Instagram and have discovered how much I love putting together cherished, vintage objects from my collection.  The result of all this is an on-going project of styling some of the items from my shop in with the vintage collectibles. They make a pleasing display and a gentle advertisement all in one!

Animal Portrait Brooches from www.CuriousPortraits.Etsy.com

This is the latest in the series featuring some of my favorite vintage jewelry arranged with my Animal Portrait Brooches. I often use my own textile designs printed out as the background, this is one of my original damask stripes.

I thought that some of my vintage buttons and notions made a pleasing display when arranged with some of my Victorian inspired Portrait Miniatures. (You can read more about the inspiration and making of these here)

I used one of my favorite vintage alarm clocks in this one along with a few writing notions. I thought the soft grey of my Daisy the Squirrel Portrait Miniature complimented the color scheme.

My dog Bingo also got his paws into it and created this one featuring his own portrait miniature with one of my original dog themed textile designs in the background!

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Revisting The Well Bred Dog & The Well Bred Cat

I've been busy working on the new website and today realized that I neglected to include my two books, The Well Bred Dog and The Well Bred Cat! I pulled them out to scan and arrange them for presentation and was reminded of that wonderful year when my dear friend James Waller and I were working on them together. It was such an exciting project. Sometimes I would do the painting first and he would come up with a clever biography for the dog or cat and sometimes he would have an idea for a story and I would then compose a portrait to accompany it. It was a truly wonderful experience to be collaborating with someone I felt so connected to both personally and creatively.

Some of the subjects were dogs and cats who belonged to friends or who lived in my neighborhood and some were eagerly waiting to be adopted at the Humane Society of NY. Here are a few of my favorite portraits:

Copies of the The Well Bred Dog can be purchased here and The Well Bred Cat here.

Of course I had to include the portrait I did of my two dogs at the time, Toby and Bingo. Bingo was less than a year old at the time!

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Two Wonderful Blog Posts about Yours Truly

I want to mention today how honored I am to have been featured on two wonderful blogs this week!

The first is by Evelyn Pelati, a talented jewelry designer who has a knack for finding interesting artists, craftsmen and designers to write about on her blog.  Just click the image to read more of her post about yours truly! You can see her beautiful jewelry on her website: evelynpelati.com

The other one is called Papoose Clothing by Ashley Duggan Smith who makes the most adorable and charming children’s clothes. Just click the image to read more of this wonderful post. You can find her unique clothing line in her Etsy shop Papoose Clothing.

Thank you Evelyn and Ashley for your very kind words about my work!

Vintage-Themed Wedding features my Victorian Cat Portraits

I just received photos from a beautiful, vintage themed wedding in which I participated in a very small way! Nearly a year ago I was commissioned by the bride to paint a female version of my Victorian Cat Portrait that she wanted to feature in her up-coming California wedding. It was a very fun project and she was so delightful to work with. As you can see the wedding is absolutely gorgeous. So much care and thought went into every detail of creating this vintage, country atmosphere which of course is right up my alley. Here are a few samples of the beautiful photographs that were taken by  Matthew Morgan Photography.

They even used the Victorian Cat Brooch as part of the Groom's boutonnière!

I love how all the delicate colors work together from the dessert table above to the Bridesmaid's dresses and the bouquet below...

The vintage furniture and cameras and chalkboard are such a perfect contrast to the Instagram Photobooth!

Lovebirds Collection

I have really been enjoying working on this series of decorative illustrations and textile designs, it has been a nice break from my usual dark, moody work! This group began as a simple bird illustration, I was going to use various song birds but as I worked it out I had the inspiration to put love birds on a swing together. I think it is so touching that love birds mate for life, they seemed like the perfect subject matter at this time of year with Valentine's Day approaching. Once I painted them I fell in love with the colors and decided to make the whole thing about love birds. I used a pink ground which is unusual for me but it seemed perfect for the aqua, mint, butter and melon in the birds. The two pieces above are available as prints and notecards in my The Curious Kitchen shop on Etsy.

Fab.com Sale

The sale is up and running! I think Fab.com did a terrific job of putting the images together and I love the copy as well. Here is the top portion of the actual sale page and also what appears on their home page. Just click on either image to go to the sale and see all of the pieces!

Christmas Parrots

Well I took the sketches I did on the table cloth last weekend and worked them up into proper drawings for a pair of paintings. I got the idea from looking through my sketchbook where I had found this old sketch of 2 parrots together. I thought green parrots with red fezs would be beautiful and strangely Christmas themed so I am adding them to my Christmas portraits queue.

Preparing for the Holidays

I've been busy this week transforming my portraits into notecards to sell in my Etsy shop. It takes a surprising amount of work to size everything up, lay them up in an attractive listing, write descriptions, lay out the images onto the cards with the type not to mention listing them on Etsy... Phew! Here are the ones I've finished so far. I love how they look on the colored backgrounds. I've already sold a set of the Steiff cards so I am feeling encouraged.

Daisy's Portrait Continues

Slowly but surely Daisy's portraits are progressing even though I never seem to find enough time to work on my own stuff. I am still excited about these portrait;. Daisy's expressions and personality are so apparent in all the photos I have of her and it is a challenge to capture them. Let's face it, most squirrels look alike. I have 5 of them now that I feed (all descendants of Daisy no doubt) and I must confess that I cannot tell them apart. Maybe squirrel features develop over time, after all Daisy was at least 4 years old and the present squirrels are 1 year at the most. It will be interesting to watch them grow and see if my theory holds water.