8″x10″ acrylic, 2013. It was a pleasure and an honor to paint this memorial for Jake, a beautiful Boykin spaniel. The portrait will be a gift from Joyce to her brother, who’s beloved dog passed unexpectedly a few weeks ago. Jake was trained to hunt and Joyce asked me to be sure to include the two dove feathers in his fur that could be seen in her wonderful source photo. Joyce learned about my work through her friend Sami, whose dogs Sadie and Pepper I painted last year.
Author: Jennifer At Your Toy Portrait
Bunny/Nappy/Foo Foo
5″x7″ acrylic on canvas, 2013. Amy’s little girl is turning one this coming November, and as a birthday gift Amy decided to honor the stuffed bunny blanket that has brought her daughter so much comfort throughout her first year. The bunny is known alternately as “Bunny,” “Nappy” (due to his magical sleep-encouraging powers,) and “Foo Foo” (as in the pursuer of field mice, I assume.) The baby chews on his ears to fall asleep, and when she learned to crawl, she made her way to the nursery, pulled herself up at the crib, and reached through the slats to grab him! By my count this is the tenth pink bunny “blanket-head” I’ve painted!
Fisher-Price Record Players
8″x12″ acrylic on fiberboard, 2013. Like most of us, I wear many different hats. One of my other “hats” is actually a pair of headphones, as I’ve worked as a dj playing house music in clubs and at raves for the past 14 years. Consequently, I have a default fondness for the turntable motif (despite the fact that actual turntables are practically obsolete in modern clubs!) I’m very fortunate that my mother saved some of best 1970s Fisher-Price toys, including this classic wind-up record player. Can’t you just hear “Edelweiss” and “Camptown Races?” I couldn’t resist painting a pair of them side-by-side as a wink at my “other job.”
Sharon’s Little People Family Portrait
8″x10″ acrylic, 2013. When she found me on etsy, a portrait of her family as Fisher-Price Little People seemed irresistibly inevitable to Sharon, a vintage Little People collector! We modified classic figures to better represent Sharon, her husband, their sons Patrick and Shannon, and daughter Jasmine. We used the standard red-capped tyke for both boys, dressing one in blue and one in yellow for differentiation. The hairstyle on this little girl, originally yellow, appears here in dark brown to match Jasmine’s. The mother figure’s yellow hair and dad’s classic dark brown have both been altered to meet in the middle as medium-blonde. My summer sale on Little People family group portraits continues!
Sonja With Tinkertoys
7″x9″ acrylic on board, 2013. That expression… we call that her “busy face.” Sonja looks this way whenever she is engrossed in an object or activity, and it ranges from mildly pursed and focused to bug-eyed and vibrating. Here’s an extreme example from her babyhood: 
Needless to say, we have found the Busy Face to be an endless source of amusement over the years, which Sonja, now five, finds a bit annoying at this point. We recently acquired a container of classic Tinkertoys at our local thrift shop, and painting her working with them has gotten me interested in making portraits of children engaged with their favorite toys. This seems to be a natural progression from years of portraits of kids and toys individually! Here’s an etsy listing for just such a dual portrait here if you’d like one of your own.
Pet Portrait: Toga
8″x10″ acrylic, 2013.
I was honored to paint this memorial portrait of Toga, a boxer who belonged to Michael and Stephen from 2007 until his passing this past January. Michael shared this history of their beloved dog:
“He was found as a sick and emaciated stray in Philadelphia when he was around 2 years old. From there a Boxer rescue organization found a foster home for him in Malta. That couple nursed him back to health and we adopted him in the summer of 2007 as a companion to a puppy boxer we’d gotten the year before. He was with us for almost 6 years. He was the most strong willed dog I’ve ever met but also exceptionally loyal, goofy and loving. He spent so many summer days working with me in the front yard that the neighbors came to call him the Mayor of Foxhall (our street). Last year he was diagnosed with a heart condition that we were treating. The picture you painted was taken the day before he passed in January. He had been running around the beach at a home we’d just purchased on Cape Cod. He was healthy and active up until his very last day. That night after we’d returned to NY a valve in his heart failed and he passed quietly. I’m sure that he’ll go down as the most unique dog we’ve ever owned.”
This painting was commissioned by Michael as a gift for Stephen’s birthday. Michael tells me that Toga was the inspiration for their friend Tim’s adoption of Olive the boxer, whose present-day and puppyhood portraits I painted earlier this year!
Mary Poppins and Blankie
5″x7″ acrylic, 2013. This stuffed Mary Poppins doll and blue-patterned blanket belong to Alistair, who will turn four next week. On a recent family trip to Disneyland, the “real” Mary Poppins was delighted to meet him and tickled to see his beloved doll! Mary blew him kisses and bestowed her little effigy with some special magic, which she keeps in her hat, to stave off bad dreams. Alistair has had his Mary Poppins doll for about two years, and the “Blankie” ever since he was a baby. Alistair’s mother Stephanie had me paint big brother Graham’s favorite things a couple of years ago, and so now the boys will have a matched set of portraits! The painting will be a gift for Alistair’s upcoming birthday.
Hedgie
9″x12″ acrylic on canvas, 2013. My very favorite thing about this stuffed Jellycat hedgehog is that one-year-old Jack carries him in his mouth by the nose. I wish that I had set up a tag at some point for this phenomenon, as I’m sure I’ve had several other portrait subjects that were transported in this manner but can’t recall which ones… I’d love to look back over them and see if there’s a particular trait that invites this behavior! Jenny Witte of the wonderful Mamatoga blog came by this custom portrait at an auction benefitting the Children’s Museum of Saratoga. It will go nicely alongside the painting she won last year at the same event! Big sister Levy’s stuffed bunny and brother Finn’s stuffed pup are featured in my previous portrait for the family, who are clearly Jellycat devotees. Here are Levy and Finn painting their favorite toys at a children’s paint-your-own-toy-portrait event I recently hosted as part of the Saratoga Arts Fest “Kids Do Art” program… We are so lucky in the Saratoga area to have blogs like Mamatoga and folks like Jenny who support local arts and family businesses!
Erin’s Little People Family Portrait
8″x10″ acrylic, 2013. I’ve painted many a Fisher-Price Little People family portrait, but have never used the iconic yellow-bibbed baby until now! This figure was one of my favorites as a child because it reminded me of a perfectly cooked hardboiled egg, which I suppose could just as easily make someone dislike it! Erin’s commissioned this portrait of herself, her husband, their baby girl, and their twin girl and boy. Both twins are blonde, she told me, but her daughter’s hair is a bit lighter in color. I took some liberties with the standard Fisher-price palette to achieve her son’s coiffure and Erin’s light brown hair, but the rest of the family is represented by existing, classic Little People.
Mister Carrot
9″x12″ acrylic, 2013. I adore a generations-old, threadbare toy, but imagine my delight at getting to paint something this quirky and colorful! This large, puffy carrot was purchased at Ikea by Amy for her adorable youngest son Ike as a desperate measure to entertain and calm him while the family shopped. At the time, Ike and the carrot were roughly the same size! These days, Ike really prefers all things Elmo in terms of toys, but the carrot has evolved into an indispensable nighttime pillow companion. This portrait marks Ike’s very recent second birthday. Here he is, having just run to get his carrot after recognizing it in the portrait…
Because we lack an Ikea in our immediate area, I was not familiar with this recent line of toys, but here’s a painting of an ill-fated bear I bought on an Ikea excursion about ten years ago. Also, if you are not one of the gazillion devoted readers of Amy’s fabulous blog, you are missing some of the funniest writing on the internet about life with small children!