In June I got to deliver a painting of a dog named Sammy to one of his mom’s close friends in Cranbrook BC. Naturally I don’t normally drive 4 hours to deliver a painting lol! But the timing worked out perfectly when I was coming through town on my way to set up my display for the Castlegar Art Walk, so we opted to meet up vs mailing the painting. And besides, it’s always funner to meet clients in person whenever possible!
Anyway, Sammy’s painting was a surprise gift to his mom from a group of girlfriends for her birthday. Sadly her pup had passed away earlier in the year, and they wanted to give her a Pet Portrait as a memento. The first task in pulling off this surprise gift of course is to get reference photos without being busted haha! Enter Sammy’s dad (thank you for doing computer recon for us!!) 😀
We opted to do a head shot for this portrait, and it was requested to leave his collar in (vs remove it) because he had a wide selection of collars and they loved dressing him in them:
“They were big into the different collars that they bought for him and this was his Irish one.”
What was really unique about this gift experience in particular, is that they sent me a video clip of the birthday girl opening her gift! So it was almost like being there with them! Was super neat, and definitely made me smile. They have given me the green light to share the clip, which I will be adding to the painting progress video of Sammy that I have in the works (coming soon!).
Here is a full photo of the finished painting:
Happy birthday again to Sammy’s mom! And thank you again to all involved for having me be a part of such a special gift.
NEW – Check out a video of Sammy’s painting in progress here: http://www.robynmillar.com/sammy-video/ 🙂