I’m excited to share that I recently celebrated a personal milestone:

“I have now completed 200 pet portrait paintings!”

It’s pretty surreal for me to think that the number of furry little faces I’ve painted over the years is now in the 200’s. Seriously… that’s just craziness! But definitely exciting.

I often get asked how it all started with me painting pets. Well, approximately 9 years ago I had an impulse to paint my childhood cat KC. I moved to Calgary in 2006 for college, and left my beloved furball at my family home. He’d lived there his whole life, so it was a no brainer to leave him there and not uproot him… though I very seriously thought about smuggling him to Alberta with me lol. Anyway, I had a bit of a painting hiatus after highschool but started painting again in 2007, and I missed that darn cat so much I wanted to make a little canvas of him to have with me in my new home. That 4″x4″ painting of him can be seen in the above image on the right. Looking at it now, it definitely was a “starter” piece lol. It looks quite different to my current style of painting, which is why I rarely show it to anyone (and why it’s purposefully out of focus in and in the background of the above pic lol). But it is sentimental for being my Pet Portrait #1, so I imagine that I will keep it forever no matter how rough it looks 😀

Fast forward to August 2016, and I have now completed over 200 Pet Portrait paintings to date! To celebrate, I decided to paint a new portrait of KC. Truth be told, I actually started this piece a few of years ago when I was approaching pet portrait #100. It was my intention to celebrate it at that time, but then that turned out to be my busiest season to date (you can check out a video on that here HERE), and it kind of fell by the wayside. Then when I was approaching the high 100’s I started chipping away at him a little more whenever I could. “If you don’t do it now, when will it get done?”. There’s always going to be more work to do, more errands or chores to do… more things to do in general. So I made time for myself to finish this guy up, and I’m excited that he gets to represent my 200th finished pet portrait painting! That 6″x6″ piece is shown in the image at the top of this post on the left.

It’s been quite the journey to this point, and I look forward to the next 100+ pieces 🙂 . Thank you all for following along with me over the years, for trusting me to paint your pets and/or sentimental gifts for loved ones, and of course for your referrals and support – it all means so much to me!