Celebrating individual dog's personalities through portrait art

Scotty’s Cartoons are more than just a portrait; they’re the very essence of your pet, so as much focus goes in to capturing their unique character, as it does on their appearance.

 One of my favourite parts of my job is hearing about each dog’s character. As part of the process, I send the client a specially designed form to help me to get to ‘know’ your dog. The answers that I receive are often hilarious!

Reports of theft are a common occurrence. It seems a lot of us (me included) have kleptomaniac dogs! But the nuances between each story really do highlight just how unique each of our dogs are.

One funny story that a client told me was that her dog absolutely HATED wearing coats. As a daschund, he often got cold, so she persisted with trying to keep him warm. One day during a walk, she let him off the lead to go and explore. He disappeared into the bushes and returned to her without his coat on! She looked for it everywhere but it was gone. This has happened several times since, and so they joke that he began to think his name was “Toby, you little sh*t!” Their other dog loves water, always knows when it’s dinner time, right down to the minute, and has a tendency to be accident prone. I wove all of these traits into the portrait, to capture their personalities in the perfect keepsake.

Sometimes there are multiple pets to be portrayed in the image, and it can take a little longer to weave their personalities in together, but it’s always such an exciting challenge. This scene had a mixture of cats, a dog and even a rabbit. The rabbit had a couple of toys that he loved to play with, and he stereotypically also loved carrots (I had a bunny that hated them!) The dog loved to play on the hardwood floor, running and then skidding whilst playing with her favourite toy cow. One of the cats was never happier than when in his Mom’s room, so I showed this with a sign as I needed to set the scene with the hardwood floor for the dog. Another cat loved nothing more than swiping things off the top of surfaces, so he happily swiped a plant in the scene.

Another multiple pet scene included a sweet little JRT who hated getting wet but loves chasing squirrels and rabbits. It was fun to pop a rabbit and squirrel behind him, with a hose directed at him. He was great at agility, and loved to play tug, so I showed him abseiling up the side of the fireplace towards the cat who was described as very nimble, kept eating house plants (hence the plant on the fireplace with bites taken from it) and the sooty paw prints portrayed his unusual tendency to keep climbing up the chimney! The second cat was obsessed with food and loved playing in puddles, so the bib and the wellies perfectly completed the scene.

One story that I loved reading about, was this gorgeous boy, who has a tendency to sleep with his tongue poking out and then forgets to pop it back in when he wakes! His Mum had a feeling he may secretly be a womble, as he collected rubbish on his walks and took it home with him. He hates mushrooms, so those seemed the perfect item to draw in the Wombles bin. He loved going for a dip in rivers but always needed help to get out again, so you may spot the assistance ladder in the background. His Dad occasionally hunted, and they had hoped that he would assist, but he was completely uninterested.

Sometimes, a single trait is so strong in a dog that it’s appropriate to base the whole scene on one factor. This mischievous boxer dog was food obsessed and asking him to wait for food was a fruitless task. I came up with the temptation alley scene and took it a step further with him tucking into the sign once he’d polished off the food from the plates!

When I’ve received the completed personality forms, I enter all of the information into tables to make it clearer for when there are multiple pets. It helps me weave their personalities together, and it’s always a challenging but very enjoyable part of the process. Over the years there have been so many stories that clients have shared, that I will always remember and still chuckle about now. One dog even destroyed the clients book that was called “The dastardly book of dogs”! It doesn’t get much more perfect than that!

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Thank you so much for reading.