My set-up date for my upcoming show at the Black Lab Brewery is coming up in a little over a week. I might be able to squeeze one more dog portrait in before that date. Fingers crossed! I have a funny one planned for next.

This one is Billy, My friends' little elderly Jack Russell (I think). He was a rescue, and does not care for strange hands to pet him, which is too bad for me, because he's such a cute little old pup.

I painted him onto the body of King George III, who defeated Napoleon and eventually had to let his kingdom be governed by a regency due to very poor mental health. I don't know much of his personal condition, but the theory I'm aware of is Porphyria, an illness bred into the royal gene pool which can cause intermittent hysteria and psychosis.

None of which were my reason for choosing King George's classic painting portrait, done by Allan Ramsay, circa the 1760's. I really liked the colour palette, and the layering of the clothes. What I'd like to do for future portraits is get friends to model for me in costume so that I can create something more original, but it suits my purposes for now to superimpose pets into direct history.

I know there are companies that will do this for you and your pet relatively inexpensively. Like Crown and Paw, which I repeatedly get tagged in posts of on Facebook. I looked them up, incapable of conceiving how a collective of artists could possibly be paid adequately for the prices the pieces were selling. I soon found that Crown and Paw is a digital art business. No disrespect from me on that account, but I certainly could not afford to sell an original of this style for $75. That would bring my hourly wage to less than $4 an hour, Canadian. I haven't calculated exactly, but I think that's pretty close.

I started doing pieces like this after a commission someone asked for of herself with her pets painted into Venus of Urbino.

I think I shared this in reference last post as well. But then I did one for Bilbo, my tiny hallway rescue cat. Here she is as Queen Bilbo I.

I'm pretty excited about how my friends will like this. I shared a nearly-complete version the other day. They seemed pretty impressed.

The next piece is going to be a mock-romance novel cover. With a dog, of course. And something that dog loved more than anything.

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