It’s time for the second installment of

Sophie and Shamrock Saturday!

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Back in November, I received an email in my inbox for an offer to have a customized pet portrait painted. I thought, “How lovely would that be!?” But I couldn’t swing the $300 asking price.

After having done so many painting classes, I wondered if any of them offered those to paint your pet. I knew that my painting would not turn out as nice as one by that talented artist advertising on Etsy; but I did know that I liked the painting classes and it would be a very personal painting to me!

A little over a week later, I found a Groupon for Art and Elixir, a Paint & Sip company I had heard of, but had not yet tried. Before buying the Groupon, I browsed through their calendar to make sure that there was a painting that I wanted to do, on a date that I could do it, at a location that I could make on that given date.

This is what I found…

For this event you will get to paint your OWN pet!
Painting your pet is as easy as 1,2,3. You will supply us with a photo of your Fido, we will sketch him/her onto the canvas for you prior to class, and finally you will paint in your pet with our guidance during class to complete this custom pet portrait. For this event, you must email Terri a photo of your beloved family pet at least 7 days prior to class.

That Law of Attraction in action!

Seeing that there were only a few seats left, I purchased the $17 – YES, $17! – Groupon right away and signed up for the class. The class is considered a “premium” one since not everyone is doing the same photo, so I paid the extra $10 to upgrade. Then, I thought…

“Which dog would I choose to paint?”

So I told Rob about the class, thinking I could paint Sophie and he could paint Shamrock. By then, Groupons were sold out. I didn’t care. I signed him up for the class regardless!

Here are the photos we chose to paint:

The event took place at the Gold Nugget Tavern in Minnetonka. We arrived early to have some dinner before making our way to the event room. {Restaurant Impression to come next week!}

When we walked in, we were given our canvases that had sketches of our dogs based on the photos we emailed, as well as a print-out of the photo.

We were also given the paint that we each would need to paint our specific pets:

We looked at the sample finished pet portraits:

We also decided on our background colors and were given some extra paint for that.

That’s when the canvas on the left became the canvas on the right:

It was then that I wondered if my Sophie’s portrait would make her look like she had only one leg! I inquired about this and one of the artists that was assisting everyone, put an outline of the leather jacket from her Sophie Fonzarelli photo on to my canvas. It was a very personalized class because we were all doing different paintings! However, there is no way that I was talented enough to make it look like a jacket, so I figured it could at least look like a blanket or something covering her other leg.

And here is the rest of the Sophie Jean artwork process…

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And here’s Shamrock in progress:

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And our finished masterpieces!

I’ll be honest and say we weren’t happy with the work throughout the process, but when we took a step back from looking at our paintings up close, we have to give ourselves some credit. We only started painting a few months ago!

Next time, I want our dogs to do the painting… like this Jackson Paw-lock.

Have you ever had a professional portrait done of yourself, your family or your pet?

What about a self-portrait or self-painted portrait of someone you love?

Cheers~
Carrie