Just a glimpse of how this blog came about...

I looked at the picture on my screen, amazed by what I saw. There she is - my gorgeous girl, painted with a mix of browns, yellows, and various other colors, looking up at me with those adorable trusting eyes. This was my girl - my dog, or as close as I'd ever had to one. There was a painting of Demi, the dog I hadn't seen for over five months, since I'd turned her in to Paws With A Cause to be trained to be a service dog.

This painting was done in March, by the artist Kimberly Santini. She paints a dog each day, and this week had been devoted to dogs involved with Paws. That week, I saw paintings of a few other dogs I had met, and they inspired me.

I took my hand up at drawing. The first one wasn't great, (in fact, now I look back and can't imagine doing one so badly ever again... oh how those eyes cause me to despair!) but still, people encouraged me. I continued to draw, improving as the months went along. Summer arrived, and I now had a break from school - time to devote to practicing drawing and building up a better portfolio.

My practice victims were all dogs either in training to be service dogs or service dogs for Paws With A Cause. Having spent a year raising one of their pups and meeting others who raised them had caused me to fall in love with those dogs. They were 'viciously' studied and drawn, and my skill with a pencil, and ability to see with my right brain and accurately draw increased.

Also - and the most amazing thing of all - is that the people who either raised these dogs or owned the service dogs were willing to pay me for my "practice sketches". This only gave me all the more reason to keep trying - though I could see the imperfections, and easily discouraged myself. But no matter how bad I thought the drawing was, these people were amazed. Soon, I was getting some requests for private commisions.

Over the next few days, I will show some of my more recent work. I won't claim to be awe-inspiring, but I can see how much I've improved over these last few months. If you want to request a private commision of an animal you would like drawn, I'll also tell you how to go about that too. I may also throw in a few blogs updating you on various other passions in my life, since my URL is oneteenspassions, but I promise that mostly this is going to have to do with my art.

Thanks for reading - I know it was rather long. I'm looking forward to adding more posts and keeping you updated. I hope that you enjoy my art and my blog!