Author: Jennifer At Your Toy Portrait

Puppy and Bear

Posted on by Jennifer At Your Toy Portrait

5″x7″ acrylic, 2011. Ding ding ding! The bells are going off as Patrick racks up Awesome Husband points for finding his wife a unique and special birthday gift. When she happened upon my website a couple of months ago, Patrick’s wife mentioned in passing that she would really like a portrait of their children’s two loveys. I wonder if he let on that he had tuned into that, or, as my husband might do to fake me out, just made an affirmative noise while staring at his phone? Patrick covertly commissioned a little portrait of Puppy and Bear, belonging to Liam (1) and Jack (3), respectively. Jack’s favorite part of Bear is his tail, which is well-worn, and Liam loves the silky undersides of Puppy’s ears. I hope that this portrait preserves a sweet, fleeting period in the boys’ childhood for years to come!

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Pound Puppy

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5″x7″ acrylic, 2011. I was very psyched about my very first vintage Pound Puppy portrait, but not as excited as my husband, a true child of the eighties whose collection even included a Pound Pur-r-rie. I’m just enough ahead of him in years that the Pound Puppy phenomenon was of little interest to me when it hit. But I get it! They were quirky and cute, a little tragic, and had that distinctiveness that made them classic. This little portrait of “Doggie” commemorates the childhood favorite of fabulously-named Meriwether, who commissioned the painting as a fun gift to herself.

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Bedtime Books

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Forget Goodnight Moon. I’m here to tell you that the most hypnotic, soothing book ever written is Maurice Sendak’s Chicken Soup With Rice: A Book of Months. There is no eating of chicken soup going on in our mostly-vegetarian household, but nearly every night I knock my daughter out with this collection of twelve sweetly surreal little rhymes. This copy survived a similar role in my own childhood. Researching the book just now, I notice that Carole King evidently made it into a song, but I refuse to listen to it! I just don’t want anything to displace the way it has always sounded to me.
I suspect you won’t often find this on the Golden Book rack at your grocery store, although it was reprinted in 2008. Another gem from my 1970’s youth, Little Mommy paints a scandalously outdated portrait of motherhood. And yet I read it to Sonja all the time. She is not at all confused or suprised by its cliches, because it perfectly mirrors our own day-to-day existence. I’m at home washing dishes, clothes, and babies, and Daddy is off at work. I was once a modern woman – how did this happen? At any rate, the pictures are gorgeous… …so I just try to provide a little context as I read. Also, the little girl looks just like Sonja. I am a new convert to The Pigeon. Many friends have tried to hype the Mo Willems Pigeon books to me, but Don’t Let The Pigeon Drive The Bus was read to us at a library storytime in a very uninspired manner, and I just wasn’t having any more of it. And then, after battling later and later bedtimes with Sonja, I picked up Don’t Let The Pigeon Stay Up Late. Although it does nothing to help her sleep, we have a ball re-reading this page a bazillion times:

The Tiniest Frame

Posted on by Jennifer At Your Toy Portrait

My husband LOOOOVES things that are oddly tiny. Not regular miniature things, but things that mess with your sense of scale, like baby zucchini. One of the most exciting periods of his life was a few years ago when someone kept mysteriously leaving tiny chairs made of sticks around his workplace. And so, when our three-year-old daughter challenged him to build frames “like Mommy’s” for some expressionistic paintings she had made on 3-inch-square canvases, I knew we had lost him to the basement workshop for the forseeable future. Greg hand-builds all my toy portrait frames from lengths of pine trim, but for this project, he decided to go full-artisan. For about a year, he has been curing wood that he cut from one of the giant walnut trees in our back yard… You can see the place where he removed the branch (which had split during a storm) near the bottom of this photo. So he cut and planed the logs until he had very small, even strips… and then put together a simple box frame for Sonja’s little painting. I asked him if he wanted to offer home-grown walnut frames to my customers, he said, “Sure – $100 apiece!” And I bet there would be a year-long wait for the harvested-to-order wood to cure, too. So there you go! Any takers?

Thumkin

Posted on by Jennifer At Your Toy Portrait

9″x12″ acrylic, 2011. This floppy little Waldorf doll belongs to Beth’s two-and-a-half-year-old daughter Isabelle. The tag is Isabelle’s favorite part of Thumkin, of course. Several months ago, Beth mused about a portrait of Isabelle’s beloved Thumkin and wrote about my work on her lovely blog. Beth wrote me that since Thumkin “has not left Isabelle’s hand for longer than a wash-dry cycle since she was 7 months old, that scrap of fabric really does become a cherished family member… I realized the other day that at some point, the Velveteen Rabbit syndrom will occur and Thumkin will be forgotten.” Beth decided to have this portrait made because “on one hand is just that little scrap of fabric, but on the other hand is the embodiment of my daughter’s babyhood.” I mentioned to Beth that I often encounter toys which have been loved by a child well into adulthood. As long as Thumkin doesn’t completely disintigrate, he may hang around longer that you expect!

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Orange Anteater

Posted on by Jennifer At Your Toy Portrait

8″x10″ acrylic, 2011. I love worn, washed-out lovies, but Veronika rocked my world with this orange velour anteater and a preference for an aqua background! Because Veronika has friends who are local to me, I was lucky enough to meet Veronika personally when she came to pick up the painting and also to have the toy model “live” in my studio. It was such fun to see Veronika’s excited reaction! She bought this Jellycat anteater (or aardvark, according to the Jellycat site) while pregnant with baby Kamar, who is just about to turn one. Although Kamar has not specifically attached to the anteater yet, Veronika has, and she hopes that this portrait will help cultivate the toy’s importance in Kamar’s eyes!

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Reclining Dog

Posted on by Jennifer At Your Toy Portrait

8″x10″ acrylic, 2011. I painted this pup while on “vacation” with my husband’s family (read: frantically working while temporarily surrounded by babysitters!). It’s a classic Carter’s dog which plays music when its tail is pulled, and he belongs to the son of design blogger Kristen. It’s evident from her gorgeous blog that Kristen has extraordinary taste, and so I was sure to include in my portrait the lovely striped, ruffled pillow against which the dog was set in the photos Kristen provided. On a day too rainy for the beach, we ended up at a Carter’s outlet where I happened upon this very stuffed dog!
It felt bizarre but cathartic to meet him there while being so immersed in the minutae of his features… a bit like running into someone you’ve recently dreamed about or have been stalking on Facebook. What?

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Shaggy Dog

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8″x10″ acrylic, 2011. This old soul of a stuffed dog has weathered many washings and mendings and even puppy attacks over the years. He has been at Tim’s wife Erin’s side ever since it was given to her by her mother when she was six. “Dog” has accompanied Erin on her travels to swim meets throughout the country, and supported her through appenticitis, mono, and bad days at school. To this day, Tim tells me, Erin would not think of going to bed without Dog! This portrait is a gift from Tim for Erin’s upcoming birthday.

And Erin would love if you put a picture on your website. Erin’s mother bought her this stuffed animal (“dog”) when she was six years-old. She has slept with dog every night since then. Dog has provided Erin with support as she dealt with appendictis, bouts with mono and less-than-great days at school. As Erin grew up, dog followed her to swim meets throughout the northeast and then to new cities across the country (Eugene, Oregon; Tucson, Arizona; Boston). Dog has survived repeated washings and re-sewings, as well as attacks by Erin’s puppy, Gary. And even to this day, Erin wouldn’t think of getting into bed without dog.

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Double Snuffles

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8″x10″ acrylic, 2011. The worn pink noses on these two Gund Snuffles bears denote an incredible tale of destiny! These bears are the childhood toys of Katie’s sister and her husband, who are expecting a baby in September. Katie tells me that an uncanny thing that the couple has in common is that they both carried their bears around by the nose in their mouths! I wonder at what point in their relationship this was discovered, and did they immediately decide to marry at that moment? This portrait will be a gift to the couple from Katie in celebration of the new baby. Here is another Snuffles portrait I did a couple of years ago… apparently worn noses are par for the course with these bears!

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Stewie

Posted on by Jennifer At Your Toy Portrait

8″x10″ acrylic, 2011. A couple of days each week, I pack Sonja and what seems like everything we own into my car and commute 45 minutes north to my parents house. There’s one bag for Sonja’s stuff, one for my running clothes and shoes, a cooler for food and drink, my laptop, my giant purse, and a big bag of art gear. A welcome uptick in business this year has caused me to need to use these visits to cram in as much painting as possible while Sonja enjoys her grandparents. This was fine when it was cold, but now that it is gorgeous and warm, it hurts a little when they run off to go canoeing or swimming. My parents live in Lake Luzerne, NY, which is packed with all manner of Adirondack-y delights, such as this spot:

…where I could be found last summer basking on a rock….

…but this year, I’m mostly here at my parent’s dining-room table while the three of them are off playing.

But this past Friday, I had remembered the kitchen sink but forgotten the correct-sized canvas for the portrait commission I was planning to work on. Frustrated, I turned to the stash of toys that my mom keeps there for Sonja (which deserves an entire post unto itself – stay tuned!) and decided to paint the main bear of the house, Stewie. In keeping with what seems to be trend in my recent work, Stewie reclines on an embroidered pillow. I think that if this happens again, I should probobly go out and enjoy the lake instead… summer is short!