May 2024 Update: Reviews, Restoration, and Recreation

Five Star Reviews

I’ve had some really lovely reviews left on my Google business page recently. It was encouraging to hear how happy people are with my artwork and how much they enjoy the whole commissioning process. I have always planned to add a review page to my website so this was exactly the prompt I needed.

One of the reviews was from a particularly challenging portrait that I created from three separate reference photos. In order to make sure that they came together to produce a coherent and beautiful image, it was important to get the right composition, lighting, perspective, focus and colour pallets. I didn’t want it to look like the two dogs had been separately superimposed on a background, but were actually there in the stadium.

As it was a pastel portrait going to the US, I made sure it was packaged up really well. I covered it with a protective layer of glassine paper, sandwiched it in-between two foam boards, wrapped it in bubble wrap, then double boxed it with a few extra cardboard sheets for good measure. I was so encouraged, therefore, when it arrived safe and sound and I received this five-star review:

“Absolutely blown away by how incredible our portrait is and how wonderful Sophie is! Amazed is an understatement. Her work in itself, is unbelievable! Every stroke of hair and detail looks so real that I can’t stop staring at! Everything about this process was fantastic from the minute I sent over an inquiry. She made me multiple mocks ups to make sure it was exactly what I envisioned before I even made the deposit and she sent me updates as it was being done so that I could see the progress while I waited. The packaging is also prestige and you can tell from her work and her customer service that she truly loves what she does. I haven’t framed it yet but I will be doing so shortly and it even came with instructions on the best type of framing to get. I have wanted to get this type of work done for a while and I am over the moon that I went with her. I will be recommending her and raving about this beautiful artwork for years to come. I also live in the US and the shipping/payment process from the UK was well explained, smooth and quick! The money was well worth it!” Marilee

(BTW If you have commissioned me in the past and wanted to leave a review then you can do so on my Google business and Facebook pages.)

Detailed Restoration

As the stadium portrait was quite large, I also needed to fill in a little more detail than was there in the reference photos. That is not actually all that unusual, and in fact is one of the many advantages of commissioning a pet portrait artist with my realistic style. As I diligently convert pixels on screen into pencil strokes on paper, the result is a much more detailed, vivid, and life-like image.

I’ve previously posted about the process of restoration, but I recently completed one of my most challenging restorations to date. Filling in the missing ear was relatively simple but the reference photo was very low resolution and blurry. Black cats can be tricky too if the lighting is not good so I had to work hard to fill in several low contrast areas and bring out the detail. I was really pleased with the result though:

Relaxing Recreation

Finally, I’ve been relaxing in between portraits by creating some cute crochet animals. A while back a made some mice for my cat Titus, and then at Easter a cute set of chicks for my cousins. Recently, though, I’ve enjoyed making some slightly larger animals including this pink nosed cat and floppy eared dog.