Recently I’ve received a few different requests to add text to custom Pet Portrait orders which is kind of neat, but due to some deadlines over the past couple of months I’ve fallen behind on blogging (aaah!)! So before sharing the latest pieces with text, I wanted to catch up & write about this one – my first pet portrait with text incorporated into it…
Last fall I was contacted by a client who wanted to have a special painting made for her sister for Christmas. She hoped to include her sister’s 3 dogs (two of which have passed), which isn’t out of the norm as I’m sometimes asked to combine individual pet photos to achieve one group composition. But what was unique to this portrait is she requested that this quote be incorporated into the painting:
“It came to me that every time I lose a dog they take a piece of my heart with them. And every new dog who comes into my life, gifts me with a piece of their heart. If I live long enough, all the components of my heart will be dog, and I will become as generous and loving as they are.” ~Unknown
Even though I hadn’t incorporated wording into previous pet portraits yet, I was excited to take on this new challenge!
When my client received her package in the mail in December she opened it to take a peek, and emailed me to say how excited she was to give it to her sister for Christmas which I thought was really cool. Then once her sister opened it, she went out of her way to send me a thank you note personally, which was so sweet too! Even though I’ve been painting pets for people for years now, it’s still hard to wrap my head around being involved in such a personal piece of their life. Especially since I often don’t get to meet them in person! So to me, I’m enjoying painting a pet for someone. And to them, the painting brings happy memories of their pets who are part of their family! Very hard to describe, and I’m sure the experience varies from person to person, but it makes me so happy to hear when the paintings can bring smiles to the recipient’s face!! So so so happy.
Adding a text element to pet portraits has been quite fun so far. It brings another visual into the mix, and also offers further customization and a totally new aesthetic. I plan to do more text in the future for sure! What do you think about adding words or phrases into paintings? I’d love to hear your thoughts 🙂
