reva Draws

Drawing custom pet portraits. To have your pet drawn, visit my Etsy store: www.Etsy.com/shop/revaDraws

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Been a while since I posted on Tumblr! Pet portraits commissions are slowing down and I’ve been drawing some inktober stuff. This one was for prompt 14: Overgrown. Drawn using ballpoint pen.

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I was asked to make this sketch a couple days ago. My client had lost her baby and dog in the same year in 2018. "The only way I could find comfort was imagining our fur baby welcoming our beautiful baby we would never meet and cuddling up with him/her." I just about cried when I read this. I felt very privileged and honored to put her concept on paper for her, if only to help heal and comfort.

I asked if I could share her story, and she replied yes and said: "I find I have bottled this up for a while, mainly because I feel like no one wants to hear our sad story. People avoid asking how I'm doing because they don't want to hear the real answer..and that's only made it harder the past few months. I've opened up to a few people this week, cried some more...and I'm feeling better than I have in months."

If someone in your life has gone through/is going through tragedy or hardship, please continue to reach out to them so they don't feel alone in their plight. You might not have the solution to their problem or know the right things to say, but your caring words are more powerful than you know.

The dog, named Indy, was a love bug who made many want a dog of their own after meeting her! She was also super intelligent as Australian shepherds usually are. Just a beautiful dog with a beautiful soul.

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Dog eyes, each a different breed. Guess what they are! Bottom pic has the answers. 😁

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Yes! I drew a background! Backgrounds are usually so difficult for me. I have no imagination for them. This started out as a fun little sketch but developed into something more. I’d like to color this piece.

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Catahoula Leopard Dog art print on wrapped canvas available in my Etsy store: http://etsy.com/shop/revadraws. Also available on fine art paper! Sizes include 8x10 and 11x14.

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This is a 5x7 graphite portrait of little Ellie that client purchased as a gift for her mom. This drawing brought tears to her mom's eyes. Whenever I hear feedback like this it just makes my day and motivates me to keep drawing. 😊  

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Nelly the gentle soul.

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This is Missy sitting in "Missy pose", and here is her story told to me by her owner: "She is about 15 years old, and I've had her for 12 years. She may not look it, but she's a tough girl. She has congestive heart failure, and her heart is extremely enlarged. She's suffered two heart attacks, and both times, the vet believed she wouldn't survive, but she beat the odds. She's still very active considering her age and health issues. One of the pictures is of her sitting, and you'll notice she's a little lopsided. Before she ended up in the shelter, she had a bone disease, and the treatment was to remove the ball of her hip. Fun backstory on the picture of her looking out the airplane window - My family and I ended up in an odd situation where we were living in a travel trailer, traveling around the country. Fenrir was still alive, and we took him with us, but with Missy's advanced age and health issues, we had left her with my parents, intending to pick her up and bring her to our new home at the end of our travels. 2 weeks before I was supposed to pick her up, she had her second heart attack, and the vet told me if I wanted to say goodbye I better get there fast. I flew to my parent's place and made arrangements for in-home euthanasia, but Missy had other plans. Every hour I was there, she improved, so I switched gears and started working on how to get her home. In the airplane picture, she's flying home with me about 72 hours after the heart attack that was supposedly the end for her. That was 10 months ago :)" I feel honored to be the artist to draw this resilient gal who obviously means the world to her owners.

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This is 豆豆 (pronounced "doe-doe", meaning "little bean" or “bean bean”). This portrait was gifted to the gentleman who was only able to spend two years with his beautiful dog. She passed away at the young age of 2 suddenly and unexpectedly. The owner cherished her and she will be remembered dearly.❤️🌱💐 Printed on 11 x 14 fine art paper.

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This is a graphite memorial portrait on 8.5 x 11 smooth bristol paper. This cute little dude and all his little black curls were a challenge to draw. But I am so glad it turned out well for the client and the owner, who recently had to say goodbye to Chico at the old age of 13. Chico had a good life and will be remembered dearly. 🌷🌷🌷❤️

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Graphite drawing on smooth Bristol paper 8.5 x 11. I will be applying color to this piece soon! 

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Who says black cats are not colorful? 

This is a drawing of our very own Scorpio. Once destined to be released from the shelter to become a feral living a life of danger, she is now safe and loved and has a home to call her own.

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I have been trying to come up with ideas to make my pet portraits a bit more interesting/different. This is a grey scale initial sketch of a painting of the resident kitty, Scorpio. I don't usually paint backgrounds so it's a bit daunting, but also fun!😄 Hopefully when finished it will resemble the image I had in my head.

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I haven’t had a pet portrait commission to draw in the past week, so I used this time to draw something other than pet portraits as a mental break. This drawing started with a doodle on the scrap piece of wrinkled paper. I decided I really liked it and wanted to make a proper drawing out of it. The wrinkles on the paper actually gave me ideas for the lines and shapes used in the background which probably made the drawing a more interesting than if I were to make it up entirely (my imagination likes to freeze up in the presence of a blank piece of paper). The drawing is influenced by the web comic “Off-White”, which has some super amazing wolf drawings in it. And of course the Ghibli film Princess Mononoke. 

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My dear friend's dog, Double! He is a rescued West Highland white terrier. This portrait is different from all other portraits I've done with the addition of the hydrangea flowers in the background.

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The start of a portrait of a Westie terrier done in pencil. I will be posting progress pictures of this portrait as I go. Hope you guys enjoy!

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Photo comparison. Often times I have to work with dimly lit photos like this and need to refer to other photos to fill in the details. I actually made a mistake with this portrait at first because I thought one area above the nose was white. But upon examining a different photo, I found out it's actually got black markings!! I was tricked by the lighting in this photo but thank goodness I caught it.