Finding the artist within.

While cleaning out a room in my parent's house recently I found a bunch of blank canvases that my Mom had.  On one of them was a taped picture of this:

artist: Ron Burns

The picture had been painted for a Humane Society advertisement but the bright colors and cute face caught my eye.

I had recently gone to a place called Sips n Strokes with some friends and was completely inspired to recreate the experience at home after finding this picture.  After a few months of busy schedules I finally gathered some friends and we attempted to paint our animal friends.

I found a cat for Matthew and Jennifer and I attempted the dog.  We started with the backgrounds, had a break for dinner and went back to work on the rest.

We used techniques that we learned at our past visit to Sips n Strokes.

And before long we had some pretty neat looking paintings.

While the original was really cute, I couldn't help but add some of my own "Duncan details" to my painting.

And I we pleased to see my work appreciated.

It was fun!  We want to do it again!