The Raison D’etre for my Best Dog Gifts
“Charcoal” because my portraits are in a rich charcoal-pencil medium, “Toufu” because of my Asian background (Charcoal toufu being a globally acclaimed delicacy).
I believe we are all individuals with individual gifts and talents.
I happened to have had a dad who had been creative, artsy but whose advertising art career had been thwarted as he was required instead to look after our family business which was tin-mining in the days of the mid 50’s in Malaysia. I had been the youngest of 5 other girl-siblings but I was also the centre of my dad’s artistic eye. He taught me to draw even before I mastered my A,B, C’s in the French Convent when I was soon enrolled in for my Primary School years.
Drawing, Illustration, Fashion Art always have been my lifelong-passion. Add to that, having had a young yellow puppy-dog from our tin=mines when I was 5 helped develop my avid love for dogs. We practically grew up together.
All through my growing years I had centred my life around dogs even though they were not all mine; big ones like longhaired Alsatians (“Ace”), Rhodesian Ridgebacks( “Asa”), pitch-black Labradors (“Mueller”), stubborn-as-a-mule Basset Hounds (“Julie”), St. Bernards (“Gigi”)…..an unending list.
I decided on Dog Portraits even though I had been a successful Fashion Illustrator of 20 years. For the reasoning that with Fashion art, I was the savvy, talented, well regarded Editorial Artist but with Dog Portraits, I was not only pursuing a natural love of mine, but it becomes a branded product that was wholly mine.
Furthermore my dogart seems to have the gift of bringing comfort into the lives of the ones who miss their dogs, wish to remember them or merely to celebrate the remarkable bonds they have with their fur-pals.
And that has been how I have been working, since 3 years ago, doing soul-satisfying art for my dog-lover-Clients, most of them American women.
My very own “Charcoal Tofu” Dog Art Service. Dark, unique, contemporary portraits for the serious dog-owning art-lovers, and my making that proverbial dent in this Universe we live in!
The Photos required by me: Casual & Sharp
My work is based on good sharp photos, taken without flash, or on cloudy days. The best ones are casual, taken on downcast days, or even in well-lit rooms.
Because my formats are not of a large size, I tend to work on heads and shoulders of my subjects though occasionally I will do full-bodied art. Furthermore I can only incorporate at most, 3 subjects into a portrait.
The pics on the above left were some of the photos given me by my customer, a Kayla Elizabeth Adams and of her award-winning Sheltie named Flash. Kayla gave to me pics of Flash and of herself also in her Prom dress that she sewed for herself.
From the many photos, I drew the ones I thought would be best for a photo collage. After a satisfactory composition was made, the Preliminary Pencil Draft was given to Kayla. After she was pleased with it, I proceeded into the Watercolor painting. And between that and the completion of the portrait, stages of progress was shown to her.
The cropped portrait of Kayla and Flash can be seen on the right side above.
The last part of my work was in the packing and shipping of the finished portrait to Kayla who lived in North Carolina, USA.
After confirmation of the draft, a 50% down payment was made to me through my PayPal account: pristang.yc@gmail.com The final portion of 50% was paid to that account before the final finished artwork was posted to Kayla in North Carolina.
