Painting Archives - Page 10 of 12

Posted on August 19, 2014August 20, 2014 by Patrick LaMontagne

A Portrait of Bruno

The first time I asked somebody if I could paint their portrait, it was a spur of the moment thing and I was woefully unprepared. My buddy Darrel and I were attending a small concert at Ironwood Stage and Grill in Calgary last year for Alan Doyle’s debut solo album, ‘Boy on Bridge.’ An intimate venue, I could have put my feet up on the stage from where we sat. A trio of Doyle, Corey Tetford and Kendel Carson, all talented and accomplished musicians, it became one of my favorite live music experiences to date, just had a really great time.

During the show, when Carson was playing her fiddle in one of the songs, I noticed the way the light was bouncing off of the wood, her face and her long straight blonde hair. It was just this instant feeling of, “I want to paint her.”

While gearing myself up to ask, all I could think was, “no matter how I do this, she’s going to think I’m creepy.”

But, I knew I’d regret it if I didn’t try, so at the end of the show, I approached her with my business card and mentioned that I’d like to paint her portrait, showed her a few images on my phone and told her if she was interested, I’d love to see any photos of her playing that I could possibly paint from, really wishing I’d brought my own camera. It was that image of her playing that I really wanted to paint, but I had missed that moment. While she was friendly and polite, I knew right away this wasn’t going anywhere. Pretty sure she thought I was creepy, and in that profession, I imagine she’s got reason to be wary of strange men approaching her after a show. Who can blame her?

I’ve painted a number of portraits over the years, mostly characters from movies, and all personal projects. A few have ended up having some very nice stories to go with them. Emilio Estevez bought the original of my portrait of Martin Sheen to give to his father last year and when astronaut Chris Hadfield was hired to speak at a conference here in Alberta, the host company bought the original of his portrait to give to him as a gift. They all graciously signed prints for me, which hang in my studio.

Even though I make my living as an artist, portraits of people are solely for my own enjoyment, at least for the time being. Up until recently, they’ve all been painted from reference from movies or online video, nothing I’ve shot myself.

A few weeks ago, I was at the local outdoor market here in Canmore. A regular Thursday event downtown in the summer months, it attracts vendors from all over, selling all sorts of food and creative products.

One particular booth, Spirits of the Creek, sells pottery, jewellery, and bio magnetic products. It’s excellent quality handmade work. As I was perusing the merchandise and talking to the vendor, with his eclectic hat that he said was handmade by a friend in California (Head n Home), there was that little voice again. “I want to paint him.”

The next week, I returned to the market with my camera and while I wanted a candid shot of the gentleman, I also knew that if I started snapping photos of him, he would notice, so I just approached him, introduced myself, told him what I was after and showed him some of my portrait work on my iPad. Bruno seemed amused by the whole idea and said he was fine with my taking the shots. He later told me that he and his wife, Donna (the creative force behind the pottery) thought it amusing afterward. Were the roles reversed, I would have as well.

Now, no matter how well a person thinks they’re being natural, a camera will always make a non-professional change his demeanor, unless the photographer is very good at putting their subject at ease. So, I skulked around the other booths, taking candid shots of Bruno from a number of different angles, and was pretty sure that most of the time, he didn’t see me. But a couple of times, he did and sure enough, he changed his posture and expression.

At one point he was talking to a customer, and for a split second he noticed me and only his eyes moved in my direction. I snapped the shot and instantly knew that was the one. As I don’t like chimping (constantly looking at the display screen at the back of the camera while shooting), I waited until I got home and sure enough there was the shot I needed, that one out of about two dozen.

I set to work painting and over the next two weeks, managed to produce what I think is probably my best portrait piece to date.

When I showed up at the market with the finished image on my iPad, I was relieved that Bruno liked it. He asked me to email it to him so he could show his wife and she sent me a lovely email the following morning, approving of the work. It was really a lot of fun to paint and I look forward to sending Bruno and Donna a canvas print next month.

On the legal side of things, I did get him to sign a model release, which basically allows me to use the image as I see fit, whether it ends up in a book or some other media. From what my professional photographer friends tell me, a model release will rarely come into play for most people, but you get everybody to sign one just for the one person that makes it necessary.

Perhaps the best thing I’ve learned from this experience is that I want to repeat it. The next time I see a person with an interesting look or character, and that little voice pipes up inside my head, I’ll be more willing to take a risk and ask if they’ll let me paint them. Some will say No, I’m sure, but for those who say Yes, I can only hope that I do them justice.

And if it’s a woman, I’ll probably get my wife to ask her.

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Posted on August 4, 2014August 4, 2014 by Patrick LaMontagne

Ukee Locals

I titled this painting, ‘Ukee Locals’ as that’s how residents in Ucluelet refer to their town. Having lived in two tourist towns (Banff and Canmore) for the past twenty years, I often feel a kinship with locals in other tourist towns, knowing what it’s like to make your living from visitors. It’s a love-hate relationship with the tourists sometimes so I have to fight the urge to tell every server, tour operator or staff member, “It’s OK, I’m not one of them, I’m with you!” which I’m really not, since I don’t live there.

When you think of wildlife paintings, a seagull is hardly the first animal that comes to mind. The fact that we’re so used to seeing them in urban environments makes many of us think they’re practically domesticated. Expert scavengers, opportunists and thieves, they’re not usually someone’s favorite animal. I kind of like ’em.

While out on my wildlife cruises in that area in June, something you’re likely getting sick of hearing about I’m sure, I saw plenty of different species of wildlife and took a lot of photos. I’ll be painting animals from that trip for quite some time and each one I do just makes me want to go back for more. While pulling into the dock one day, literally seconds before Al (with Archipelago Wildlife Cruises) cut the engines, I noticed two gulls perched on one of the many posts around the harbour. What I was really aiming for was a shot of one of them flying, but when I got home and started sorting through my photos, I realized that this was the scene I wanted to paint and I used three different pics as reference, not including the one you see here.

Originally this was just going to be a sketch painting, but the more I worked on it, I just couldn’t put it away. Even when it was finished, I found myself still wanting to work on minute detail that nobody was going to see. The wood on the posts, the aluminum caps, the feathers, the light…each presented another challenge and I had a lot of fun with this painting. It turns out that I learned a little about the birds themselves, too.

As I was painting them as a couple, I realized that I didn’t know if males and females of this species looked alike or not. Birds of different gender will often have different plumage. It would be embarrassing to paint them as male and female only to have somebody point out that females look completely different. Keep in mind that I’d already done a lot of work on these when this popped into my head. Fortunately I found out that the only visible difference in this particular type of gull is that the female is a little bit smaller, which also worked for the painting. I also found out that the type of gulls in the Ucluelet area, all up and down the northern west coast actually, are called Glaucous-winged Gulls, something that isn’t going to matter to most people. They’re seagulls.

For the technically minded, this was painted in Adobe Photoshop CC on a Wacom Cintiq 24HD display. Photos were only used for reference and all of the detail was achieved using relatively simple brushes without any texture overlays.

Incidentally, I did get the shots I needed of one of them taking off from the post, so there might be another seagull painting in my future.

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Posted on May 2, 2014 by Patrick LaMontagne

Calgary Expo 2014 – The Wrap Up!

This year’s Calgary Comic and Entertainment Expo has come and gone. Much more than a ‘Comic-con,’ the event attracts some of the biggest names on the circuit and with attendance approaching 100,000 this year; it has become one of the largest of its kind in North America.

Many types of vendors flock to the Expo, including artists. 2013 was my first year with a booth and it was an incredible learning experience. I spent a fair bit of money on display hardware, retail walls, print bins and other equipment you don’t think about until you have to, so the first year wasn’t a money maker. I brought far too many prints with me, so with what I brought home, I just ended up with inventory that eventually sold throughout the year at About Canada in Banff, the Calgary Zoo, and my online store.

Armed with a little experience (a dangerous thing?), I started my 2014 prep early, bought fewer prints, added postcards to the mix (btw: VERY successful), and tweaked my plans to streamline things a little before setting up my booth for my second year.

Between the daily editorial cartoons, illustration gigs, and the paintings that I never seem to have enough time for, adding even one trade show to an already busy schedule is a frantic juggling act. Talking with other artists who do this sort of thing, seems we’re all just two seconds away from panic and padded rooms.

The addition of a fourth day this year, really just four hours, was an unwelcome fly in the ointment. While the Stampede grounds in Calgary are only an hour and half drive from Canmore, the odds this time of year that the weather could turn foul (especially this year) meant that commuting every morning and night was unwise. Long days in the booth without a break were exhausting, which made falling asleep at the wheel a real possibility. Adding a fourth day meant taking an extra day away from my office last week in order to set up, plus another night in a hotel, an expense that wasn’t justified by Thursday “just looking today” sales.

I figured I could handle Thursday and Friday by myself and it really wasn’t difficult. The time went by fast and when I needed a bathroom break, my next door neighbours were happy to mind my booth for me. For the most part, there’s an atmosphere of camaraderie among the vendors. We’re all in this together.

My wife, Shonna, arrived on Saturday. Our friend Michelle was attending the event and graciously agreed to bring my lovely assistant to my aid. On Saturday and Sunday, the two busiest days of Expo, I really did need help at the booth and I couldn’t have asked for better. I wouldn’t have done so well had it not been for Shonna’s support, and that pretty much applies to my whole life in general.

While traffic ebbed and flowed, it was busy most of the time. People wanted to talk, asked a lot of questions about the work and seemed genuinely interested. Most artists want to stand out from the crowd, and many told me they’d never seen anything like my paintings, sweet music to my ears. One woman said that they looked like, “cartoon animals who found a way to come into the real world.”

I really liked that.

It was a great feeling to recognize a common reaction to my paintings. Folks would be walking down the aisle, scanning their surroundings, and when their eyes settled on my booth, they’d suddenly stop and smile. It happened more times than I could count and most didn’t even know they were doing it. It got so that Shonna started mentioning it to them. They’d smile, give a nudge to whomever they were with and then they’d come over.

It made me think of Kermit the Frog in the Muppet Movie. Dom Deluise’s character gets Kermit to consider leaving the swamp only when he tells him that he could ‘make millions of people happy.’ There are worse aspirations.

While there isn’t a lot of opportunity for networking when the event is in full swing, I did have some good conversations with nearby vendors. I couldn’t really leave my booth to wander and look around, but one thing about staying in one spot, eventually everybody walks by, so I did get to see some of the great outfits. Many enthusiastic people dress up (cosplay) as favorite characters from TV,film, comic books and video games, putting a lot of effort into their costumes.

One of the great surprises this year was repeat customers. People who bought a print or two last year came back to buy more. Best of all, we recognized many of them. I had plenty of people who said they’d seen my work before but couldn’t figure out where. When I mentioned the Calgary Zoo and About Canada in Banff, light would dawn in their eyes. Many needed no prompting at all, they just told me where they’d seen it, and some had even bought my prints at those venues.

This face to face connection and recognition isn’t something I get while working alone at home or through interaction on social media. It was very gratifying.

While I’m comfortable talking to people and public speaking doesn’t faze me, I’m a very private person and spend most of my time alone. Being ‘on’ for four days in customer service mode was mentally and physically exhausting. I was so drained on Monday that I managed to get one cartoon out and spent the rest of the day in a daze, interrupted by a few naps.

There is no doubt in my mind, however, that I want to repeat and improve upon the experience in 2015, especially since it will be a milestone 10^th year for the show. I’ve already booked my booth again and even asked for the same spot. Each year teaches me something new and I learned a lot this time around. I’ll be going into my third year with a more solid foundation and a better idea of how to streamline things, knowing what works, what doesn’t, and with some new ideas I’d like to try.

Even though I cut back from last year’s order and did very well, I still came home with more prints than I wanted, mostly from fear of not having enough for the whole weekend. So once again, I’m having a big post-Expo print sale and everything in the store is up to 30% off.

One of these days I’ll figure the inventory right. Until then, I’ll just keep trying.

Posted on March 25, 2014March 25, 2014 by Patrick LaMontagne

A Little Death and Darkness

Every once in a while, it’s nice to explore new challenges. It was an exercise doing that very thing which led me to create my popular series of Totem paintings, which are still my favorite pieces to paint. Recently I painted my first landscape, and while it was different for me, a worthwhile exercise and something I’ll repeat again, I doubt that landscapes will be one of the foundations of my future work and business. Feel free to call me on that statement if years from now, I’m painting more landscapes than anything else. As somebody who had never planned on being an artist for a living, I’m well aware that today’s plans are often replaced by tomorrow’s happy accidents.

Recently, a commercial opportunity was put in front of me to paint some images that are a departure from anything I’ve done before, some paintings with a little death and darkness to them. Still encouraged to use my own style in the renderings, which means they’re unlikely to steal any sleep from anybody, this pending series of paintings will definitely look like a matched set. I have no plans to abandon my Totem paintings, but for the next little while, you’ll be seeing the sort of image shown here, while I explore this genre.

While I can’t say anything right now about the intended use for these paintings, I plan to have a little fun with it, stretch myself a bit, and see if I can’t poke a little fun at the darker side of life.

This was painted on both the Wacom Cintiq 13HD and the 24HD displays using Adobe Photoshop CC. It began as a concept sketch that you see below, with the finished piece beside it for comparison. You can click on the image to see it larger.

Posted on March 8, 2014March 8, 2014 by Patrick LaMontagne

Painting Elephant Rock

This is my first landscape painting, a formation near Ucluelet, B.C. called Elephant Rock.

A few years ago, my wife Shonna, and I took a vacation to Vancouver Island, the first time there for either of us. While many find the long drive to be part of the experience, we’re destination types, so we flew into Comox, picked up our rental vehicle (reserved a car, got a massive truck, which was quite a lot of fun), and spent the week touring around. We visited some friends and family, spent a few days in Victoria, then drove out to the west coast of the island where we rented a cabin in Ucluelet for a few days. It ended up being one of our best vacations to date.

The drive out to that part of the island is beautiful. Coastal rainforest, a roller coaster highway that’s not for the faint of heart, with a lot to see along the way. At the end of the road you’ll find Long Beach, hiking trails, spectacular ocean vistas and two little towns. On one end is Tofino and on the other Ucluelet, where we’d booked our cabin. Friends of ours used to live there and loved it and after visiting both towns, we’re glad we stayed in Ukee. We’ve lived in a tourist area for two decades and to us, that’s what Tofino felt like, a tourist town. A couple of hours there and we were happy to head back to Ucluelet, more of a working fishing village, but still a tourist draw as well. It’s only a 30 min drive between towns, but we stopped along the way for a hike through the rainforest on an elevated boardwalk, complete with staircases and bridges that emptied us out onto a beach at low tide, where we could wander among the rocks looking at sea life in the tide pools.

One of the highlights of this island trip was a whale watching cruise through the Broken Islands group, something we’d booked in advance with Archipelago Wildlife Cruises. Al and Toddy live aboard their boat and take tourists out to see the abundant wildlife and incredible landscape and it truly was one of the best days we’ve had on any vacation. We saw Grey Whales, Humpbacks, Sea lions, Bald Eagles and more, and I was happily snapping photos left and right. Now, none of them ended up being good reference for my Totem paintings, but this wasn’t work, it was a vacation.

On the way back, Al drew our attention to Elephant Rock. I recently sent him an email asking for a refresher on the history of the rock and he sent back this explanation. “The rock marks a boundary between the Ittatsoo tribes and the Toquart tribes. The boundary goes beyond the time of tribal memory. Essentially boundaries marked shore rights. If a whale washed up it belonged to the tribe with the rights to that shore line. Within living memory this was a peaceable boundary until the government drew official lines between the various tribes in the area, probably all over the province. They didn’t use that rock, the official line is somewhere between Elephant Rock and the existing village in Ucluelet Harbour. The tribes on either side have never come to agreement over this official boundary.”

Once again, government intelligence rears it’s ugly head. But that’s the other part of my business and I’ll leave that alone right now.

I remember taking the photo and thinking, “I’d like to paint that,” even though I consistently tell people that I don’t paint landscapes. For three years it has laid dormant in my archives until I recently got the urge to give landscape painting a try. While I’m fortunate to live in one of the most beautiful places in the world, spend a lot of time outdoors and taking photos of the Rocky Mountain landscape in my backyard, it’s funny that my first landscape isn’t from around here. People come from all over the world to visit our neighbourhood and see the sights we get to experience every day. But, you get used to it and as wonderful as it might be, you like to experience something different once in a while, which is why I enjoyed the area around Ucluelet so much. I’m sure if I lived on the island for twenty years, the mountains I see every day here would have a similar draw for me.

I thoroughly enjoyed this landscape painting, although it did have me frustrated at times. It took a LOT longer than I thought it would and presented me with challenges I haven’t experienced before. The detail I put into my animal paintings just wasn’t possible here because of the distance in the image, not without making it so massive that even my powerful computer wouldn’t have been able to handle it. It’s still one of the largest paintings I’ve done, the full resolution file measures 40″ X 40″ at 300ppi. I painted it on both the Wacom Cintiq 13HD and 24Hd displays using Adobe Photoshop CC (photos only used for reference). The square composition was unusual for me as well. But it was a personal piece, an experiment, and well worth my time and energy. I’m quite pleased with the finished result and there will be more landscapes in my future.

One epiphany I had while painting this was that I wasn’t just painting a place, but capturing a moment in time. I was trying to get each branch right, the height of each tree to match its neighbour, the small ripples in the waves, and the light just right. But, the reference photo was taken three years ago. I realized that this island wouldn’t look like this, now. The rocks would, sure, but trees grow, they die and landscape is ever changing. I rather liked that idea, that this was a moment that is gone, but I could still go there in the painting. And it really felt like being back there. As I painted, I saw things that had previously gone unnoticed. Painting in a shadowy spot in the brush, I realized “hey, there’s a tree trunk in there.” or working on part of the rock formation and having a mental shift that made it feel more like sculpting than painting.

As odd as it might sound, this painting was a bit of a spiritual experience, one that I’m grateful to have had. I’m going back to Ucluelet on my own later this Spring, an artistic retreat just to sketch, paint, write and take photos. I’ve booked a little cabin right on the harbour. I’ll be going on another cruise with Al and Toddy and I’m looking forward to seeing Elephant Rock once again in person. Having spent so much time with it in this painting, I believe I’ll see it with new eyes.

Click on any of these images to see them larger.

Posted on January 24, 2014January 24, 2014 by Patrick LaMontagne

Photo Reference and Painting Comparison

It was suggested this morning on social media that it would be interesting to compare the reference photo I used for my Parrot Totem with the finished painting. Since some digital painters trace over photos, I thought it would also be a good opportunity to show that I don’t, so it kills two birds with one stone. OK, that’s probably a really bad metaphor, especially considering the subject of the painting.

Pete Collins is one of the Photoshop Guys with the KelbyOne organization and I’ve had the pleasure of hanging out with him at Photoshop World in Las Vegas a couple of times. Pete’s a great guy, loves to encourage creative types and is a very talented illustrator and photographer himself. One year, he sent me a folder full of pics he’d taken at the zoo and told me I could use any of them for reference, which was incredibly generous of him, but anybody who knows Pete wouldn’t be surprised by the gesture. He’s good people.

Click on the images to see them larger.

I’ve used a few of them for painting sketches and now two of them for finished paintings. Pete also supplied me with the main reference for my Ostrich Totem. While I usually end up using more than one reference, this one was pretty good and was my main reference for the finished painting. I bought a couple more from iStock for the close detail reference, as Pete’s wasn’t a large photo so the anatomy for some of the fine detail wasn’t visible here.

As you can see, it’s obvious this is the reference I used, but with my style of painting, especially with the Totem paintings, I take a lot of liberties with painting the anatomy, especially in the face and proportions. It is a caricature of the animal, rather than a copy of the photo. Zooming in on the detail, the photo doesn’t provide a lot because it wasn’t large, so you can see where I took more liberties with the details. My painting is very large, so I could still zoom in quite a bit further. I rely on reference photos because I can’t exaggerate an animal’s features or paint the relationships in the anatomy accurately if I don’t know what the animal looks like. Most artists will either paint from life (in a perfect world) or will use photo reference when available. When I’m painting commission portraits of pets, I need VERY good reference pics in order to get the likeness as close to reality as possible. When I’m painting my Totems, however, I can get away with a little bit less because I’m going to be distorting reality anyway.

Posted on January 24, 2014 by Patrick LaMontagne

Parrot Totem

As sometimes happens, I hadn’t planned on painting this Totem anytime soon, if at all. I just happened to do a painting sketch for practice of this Macaw a little while ago. When I posted the rough painting on social media, the response was very surprising. People really seemed to like it. I asked my wife, who is always my harshest critic, a trait I both love and loathe about her, and she said she really liked it as well. Since I needed to get another Totem done fast in order to meet a print deadline for my Calgary Expo booth in April, I figured it might as well be the Parrot Totem. I realized while finalizing the files that this is my 20th Totem painting. Where does the time go?

While it has become a cliché for me to say that ‘I really had fun with this painting,’ it can’t be said for this one, at least not entirely. From the original sketch to the final hours, this one kind of felt like work, couldn’t quite get in the groove for most of it. However, I woke from a sound sleep last night around 1:30AM for no reason in particular, and I lay in bed for a half hour until I realized I wasn’t going back to sleep. One of the benefits of my office being mere steps from my bedroom, I did what I usually do on the rare occasions I can’t sleep, I got up to paint. And from 2:00AM to 730AM when I finished the painting, I was really enjoying myself with it, so insomnia turned out to be a good thing. Or perhaps the reason I woke in the first place was that the parrot was squawking for closure. Either way, I’m happy with the finished result.

I’ve stopped keeping track of how long these take, but were I to guess, maybe around 20 to 25 hours in between my other work. It was painted in Photoshop CC on both the Wacom Cintiq 13HD Cintiq and the 24HD Cintiq, moving back and forth between the two, depending on whether or not I was working in my office or painting in the evening while watching TV in the living room. Thanks to Pete Collins for the reference photo he gave me a few years ago. I finally got around to using it. Pete’s a generous soul and a great guy, but don’t tell him I said that. It’ll go to his head.

I think another reason that I wanted to paint it was that people seemed to be just fine with the painted sketch being a finished product and I most certainly was not. Add many more hours to it and here’s the difference between the two.

Posted on January 2, 2014 by Patrick LaMontagne

Gorilla Sketch Painting (sort of)

In my continuing efforts to paint more, I decided to do another rough painting sketch of a gorilla this afternoon. I just couldn’t stop, however, so I took it further than I had intended. I was having fun, dammit! While I think I might compose it a little differently, maybe show a little more of the body, this may end up a Totem painting.

Posted on January 1, 2014 by Patrick LaMontagne

Parrot Sketch

Woke up earlier than I wanted to this morning on the first day of the year. As I’m usually an ‘early to bed, early to rise’ type, the cat is used to me getting up at 5AM. Creatures of habit and routine, she was pawing at my legs at 5:30, clearly not concerned that I had stayed up late last night. As I’m not one who is able to get up for a half hour and then go back to bed, it was a good excuse to do something creative first thing. With hot coffee and tunes in the headphones, I decided to do a sketch painting of this parrot. With no intention of it becoming a finished painting, it was nice to just work on it without any expectations and you can never get enough practice. I plan to do a lot more of these this year as I quite enjoyed it.

Happy New Year!

Posted on December 29, 2013 by Patrick LaMontagne

Raccoon Totem

Here’s the last painting of the year and another addition to my Totem series. At present, I’ve got about eight to ten animals waiting in the wings to be painted. I’ve had the reference photos for a number of them for quite some time and even though I don’t have an order in mind, it just seems that each gets their turn whenever it feels right. I had not expected to be painting the Raccoon Totem this year, but when choosing which would be my last painting of 2013, I went through the different folders and reference images, and it just seemed the right time to paint this one.

Whenever I try to manipulate which Totem I’ll paint, whether it’s for commercial reasons or a request from the gallery, I never feel completely good about it. I learned a while ago to just paint whichever one feels right for the time I’m ready to start a new one and my best work will come through. This time, it was the raccoon, and (say it with me)…I had a lot of fun with this one.

There appear to be new challenges with each Totem, whether it’s features or fur and for this one, the fur and hair was different. It wasn’t particularly difficult, but the wiry raccoon hair is unlike any of the animals I’ve painted before. Just as the Bison and Otter Totems required me to paint hair a little differently, the Raccoon required me to paint on more layers than I normally would, in order to get that deeper layered look I achieved with the hair in this painting. I’m pretty pleased with how it turned out.

This was painted on both the Wacom Cintiq 24HD and Wacom Cintiq 13HD displays, using Photoshop CC. No photos or overlaid textures were used in this image, it was all done with brush work. I don’t keep track of how long it takes to paint these anymore, because I usually spend an hour or two here and there over a two or three weeks when my other deadlines allow it. As always, I relied on a few reference photos for this painting and would like to thank my friend Susan Koppel who provided me my main reference for this Totem. Susan takes wonderful pet portraits, and also donates her time to her local Humane Society in Nevada and you can’t help but want to adopt all of the pets she photographs as she makes them look their absolute best. Rather than me ramble on about her skill and talent as a photographer, check out her website and you’ll see for yourself. You can find her at susankoppel.com

Happy to end the year with a Totem painting and looking forward to painting a lot more of them in 2014.