Robyn Millar

Earlier this month, a doodle named Gromit got a portrait done in acrylic on 8″x10″ canvas. The painting was a result of a Gift Certificate purchased from a mother to give her daughter as a surprise birthday gift, which I thought was so sweet! The birthday girl got in touch with me almost immediately to redeem the GC, and I don’t blame her because look at how stinkin’ cute her doggie is 😀 !! As soon as she received the finished painting she took a pic of Gromit posing with it, which I always love:

A photo posted by Robyn Millar (@artbyrobynmillar) on Jun 6, 2016 at 5:26pm PDT

(If you are having trouble viewing the image, you can also view it HERE)

She warned me that Grommie had just got a haircut, so he is much fluffier in his painting than the photo. But it’s all good! I love these pix, as well as far too impatient to wait for his hair to grow back out to see said pix lol. 🙂

If you’d like to view the full image of the painting (not just the close up shown at the top), you can view it on my Pet Portrait Portfolio page.

This weekend my husband and I got to meet our friends’ baby girl for the first time. Her name is Maggie Rose.

I’m a total Simpsons nut, so I couldn’t resist doing a custom watercolour piece and coordinating card showing Maggie Simpson with rose flowers. Since our friends love The Simpsons also, I opted for this very “on the nose” name-themed baby gift. Above is a photo of the original 5×7 watercolour I did for them in a coordinating yellow frame.

I couldn’t help but make a card also lol, and this one was done with markers:

Apparently I was the only gifter who made reference of her name and The Simpsons lol. Meanwhile this was all I could think about haha! #NailedIt

Welcome to the world Maggie Rose <3

A family friend contacted me to paint her brother & sister-in-law’s pair of kitties as a gift – Lola is an all black cat with green eyes, and Jasmine is all black with yellow eyes & two distinct white whiskers! These cutie faces were done on 6″x6″ canvases, and headed off to Vancouver last month.

For the paintings it was requested that Lola have a green background, and Jasmine have a purple background. I was asked to pick the shades as long as they weren’t pastel, so I opted for vibrant jewel tones. One emerald & one amethyst – which I feel complimented the kitties nicely while making their eyes pop at the same time. It’s rare for me to work with bright colours, so it was fun to do so for this set!

Black animals are super hard to photograph, and same seems to go for their paintings too lol! So the above pic is on a bit of an angle, but I love this pair’s paintings side by side so it all works out lol! Closer up shots of each individual painting can be viewed in my Pet Portraits Portfolio.

A couple weeks ago I got to mail out a painting of Rocky the Boston Terrier. As soon as his package made it home in Moncton / New Brunswick, they let me know it arrived safe and also sent me some adorable pix of Rocky posing with his painting!! My favourite one shown above 🙂

For this piece we used my client’s favourite photo of her pup, showing him in a forest scene covered in leaves. In the original photo Rocky was wearing a harness/leash but we removed that in the painting, and she also asked that I include his name tag (from another pic). This was no problem of course, although I’ll admit the scale of doing the text that tiny was tricky lol! But I like those types of challenges. Here is a close up pic of the name tag detail (with finger to show scale):

Oh! And you know what else headed out with their package? A watercolour Pets-a-Sketch! She sent me two pix of Rocky to choose from, and while both were adorable I opted for the one of him wearing a frilly shirt of some kind. I’m a sucker for pets in clothes what can I say lol. You can take a peek at the finished drawing here:

A photo posted by Robyn Millar (@artbyrobynmillar) on May 17, 2016 at 2:56pm PDT

(If you are having trouble viewing this photo, you can also view it HERE .)

To view the full image of Rocky’s painting, please visit my Pet Portraits Portfolio Page.

“Hello, my name is Dudley, and I’m insanely cute!!”

A couple weeks ago this 8″x10″ painting headed off to Edmonton AB. Dudley is a 9 year old one-eyed Boston Terrier, who was adopted by his “hooman dad” about 4 years ago. When they received the painting, this is what they posted on Instagram with a note below:

A photo posted by Dudley (@dudley.the.boston) on Apr 24, 2016 at 7:00am PDT

(If you are having trouble viewing the above photo, you can view it online HERE)

“A while back, I decided that my dad’s world didn’t revolve around me quite enough and since there was an open spot on the wall, a pet portrait of yours truly seemed like the only logical thing to hang there. So, he got a hold of Robyn @artbyrobynmillar, to do up a little something and this is what she did. I don’t know about you guys but I think she did a freakin’ FANTASTIC job!!☺”

If you are on Instagram and like following animal accounts (I am most definitely guilty of this lol), and like a bit of humour thrown in there, feel free to check out Dudley’s account at www.instagram.com/dudley.the.boston/.

I really enjoyed painting this little guy, and am super happy that Dudley & his dad are enjoying the painting <3 !

A fun side note – Dudley isn’t the first one-eyed cutie pup I’ve got the pleasure of painting to date! The first is Mookie (view the pic on facebook HERE), then I got to do two watercolour sketches of Willard (a pic can be viewed HERE) who were actually commissioned by Dudley’s dad 🙂 .

Last week Arthur the King Charles Spaniel’s painting arrived safe & sound in Newfoundland, so I finally get to share pix of this adorably dapper little fellow! I seriously couldn’t wait to do so 😀

This pet portrait painting was given as a surprise belated wedding gift from aunt to niece/nephew. A special touch to this piece is that the reference photo used was actually from their wedding day, with their doggie in the most darling tuxedo ever for the occasion!! I think it’s safe to say that he gets the award for cutest wedding party member of all time… In my opinion… Man am I ever in love with this little pup lol! Anyway, my client sent me the above photo of Arthur posing next to his painting (I like to call these “Animal Doppelgänger” pix), and I seriously can’t even handle the cuteness going on! <3 Love love love.

And just for fun I’d also like to share a close up pic of this handsome lil guy:

For the full photo of Arthur’s painting, please visit my Pet Portrait Portfolio page.

The first painting to head out of my studio after ‘The Big Move‘ was of Charlie the chocolate lab on a 14″x11″ canvas. His parents had a little photo session of him with his painting, and sent me this fun shot of their smiley guy (above). Love it!

For Charlie’s piece we used his parents’ favourite photo of him, which happens to be an adorable shot of him nestled under a dining room chair. For the painted version, we opted to take out the chair and just leave in the floor detail in the background. Taking out the chair also meant ‘creating’ the missing ear detail, but this was an easy fix since we had another ear photo to use that blended in seamlessly to his pose. Below is a pic of the reference picture with the chair legs in it next to the painting while it was still in progress:

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Oh hi there! It’s been a while since I last posted on my blog (almost 3 months, yikes!), so I feel like I should explain. In a nutshell… it’s because of ‘The Big Move’ 😀

As mentioned in my most recent  e-newsletter that I sent out, my husband and I moved in January which is very exciting!!  I hadn’t moved in about 8 years, and doing so in your 30’s is definitely a whole different monster than moving in your college days (when you could probably just cram everything from your apartment into your car lol). I knew this, I was prepared for this… and it was all as big of an undertaking as predicted lol. I’m super thankful that it all went as smoothly as it did though, and we couldn’t be happier with our new home!! <3

Months of planning and prep went into the move, and even with that it still took a while to settle in. I somehow managed to completely underestimate the time it would take to get unpacked & get back into a normal routine lol. Which in turn derailed my painting (and blogging!) schedule for a bit. But thankfully everything is coming back into a regular groove now.

My studio is almost all set up now too, woot woot! It’s feeling good, and I’m sure I’ll be tweaking it here and there as time goes on (as I’ve always done lol). And I hope to get back into a normal blogging cycle soon too, so keep an eye out for some posts on paintings I’ve been working on over the last while 🙂

Thanks to my wonderful clients, I had another great Xmas season! I got to paint various doggies this year – some were local, and some got to travel. In addition to my usual pet paintings and pet sketches, I even got to do a totally custom piece too!

Here is a pic of some of the paintings that headed out of town:

All went to various parts of BC actually now that I think about it lol. And two more went also, but I can’t share just yet as they are belated gifts 🙂 . So keep an eye out in January for those.

Here we have some of the local orders:

I brought in a few new canvas sizes for this year which was fun – this included 7″x7″ (far left), a custom 8″x13″, and 9″x7″ (bottom right).

And this is the douzey:

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