8″x10″ acrylic on canvas, 2013. Having painted a couple of hundred stuffed bears over the past few years, I’m somewhat immune to their charms. However, as soon as I laid eyes on Mike, the whole raison d’etre for Your Toy Portrait came rushing back to me! Mike’s owner, Michael, a blogger and amusing Twitter presence known as “The Muskrat,” was given this Gund bear about 30 years ago. His father, an Air Force pilot who travelled a lot, brought home a bear for each of his sons on his return from a trip. Michael and his brother Kevin named the bears Mike and Bobby, respectively. In order to tell them apart, both bears were dressed in Underoos — Mike’s are Superman, and Bobby wears Batman. I can’t get over the way thirty years of wear and tear and love molded this bear of once-average cuteness into this freakishly adorable thing!
Author: Jennifer At Your Toy Portrait
Pet Portrait: Sadie
8″x10″ acrylic, 2013. This beautiful yellow lab is named Sadie, but children in the classrooms Sadie has visited want to know why she is not called “Salt!” Just like her companion Pepper, Sadie earned an American Kennel Club Canine Citizenship award working as a therapy dog. Sadie joined Sami’s family when she was eight months old. Now eight years old, Sadie is described by Sami as being a very “Marley and Me” kind of dog… They have chased her down highways and she’s eaten many a loaf of bread off the kitchen counter. Over time “Sadie-Bug” has proven to have some endearing quirks: She is afraid of stairs and is especially fearful of feet moving under bed-covers! She is a great traveller and enjoys cruising around in the family’s VW Beetle. Sadie is now the favorite friend of Sami’s little boy Samuel, who learned to say “‘Adie” just after “Momma” and “Daddy!”
Wind-Up Hello Kitty
5″x6″ acrylic on cardboard, 2012. A couple of years ago, whenever then-two-year-old Sonja was asked what she wanted for Christmas, she would only answer “A wind-up kitty.” My husband, who loves an internet hunt, ordered an assortment of waddling, jumping, and spinning cats. Sonja did not actually show much interest in any of them when she found mechanical kitties under the tree… I suspect that, to Sonja, a “wind-up kitty” sort of represented a Victorian, classic idea of what children recieved as gifts in books such as “The Night Before Christmas!” In the years since, we’ve gathered quite a collection of wind-up toys and have fun staging races and parades. This Hello Kitty is one of our favorites. Check out my wind-up monkey portrait here!
Pet Portrait: Pepper
8″x10″ acrylic, 2013. Pepper had countless charms and accomplishments, including an American Kennel Club canine good-citizenship award for her work as a therapy dog. Eleven years ago this weekend, Pepper was found as a six-month-old stray, scavenging and tormented by local kids. Once rescued, she was only apart from Sami for about 12 days over her lifetime, and traveled everywhere with her. When Pepper was four, the family got a lab named Sadie. The two dogs attended obedience school together, where Pepper flourished, amazing everyone with such tricks as covering her face demurely with her paws when Samie would ask, “are you shy?” Pepper loved obstacle courses and could jump through hula hoops. She could escape from almost any cage, fence, or room, and nimbly climb almost anything to reach food. Pepper became a therapy dog at age five, visiting hospitals and nursing homes, school reading programs, and a library program for autistic children. The tags hanging from Pepper’s collar were well-earned, and I’m honored to have painted this extraordinary dog!
Adam’s Family
8″x10″ acrylic, 2012. For this custom family portrait, Adam had to decide which vintage Fisher-Price Little People best represent his family. So that’s Adam’s oldest son, Dean, in the front with the baseball cap, and his strawberry-blonde son, Jon, on the right. But Adam figured that his wife, Jen, most resembled a little freckle-faced girl Little Person he’d seen in a photo I’d sent him. “I’m informed that’s a kid,” he wrote me, “so perhaps you could put freckles on a brown-haired woman?” I love a modification challenge! The classic “mom” features and the cheery freckles combined nicely. And for Adam himself? “Non-descript dude (classic green-bodied ‘dad’) works for me!” The portrait will be a Christmas gift from Adam to Jen.
Silas’ Bear
5″x6″ acrylic on cardboard, 2013. This is a disproportionately tiny portrait of a stuffed bear that is quite large in size and in gravitas. He has never had a specific name, but he’s been the favorite companion of thirteen-year-old Silas all her life. Silas is the beautiful, statuesque daughter of my dear friend Jennifer, who and this painting is a my Christmas gift to them. I knew the bear still an important presence in Silas’ life when he popped up on Jennifer’s Instagram (which they have come to sort of share) with the caption “My best fwendd
Ian
4″x5″ acrylic on cardboard, 2013. This lucky baby with his amazing cloud of diaphanous hair is the son of my dear friends Jon and Brian, both teachers, who are kind of a big deal! After already having already been married once in front of family in friends and then again in Canada, a triumphant photo of their legal New York State marriage at the Albany City Hall ran in the New York Times. Ian joined the family soon after and is the most easy-going, sweet baby you could ever hope to ride with for hours and hours in a car, as Jon and Brian have discovered with on their frequent travels. This year I also painted Ian’s stuffed owl and his classic Sophie the Giraffe.
Woobie
8″x10″ acrylic, 2013. A couple of years ago, I painted a white stuffed tiger for Jen’s then-two-year-old daughter Samantha. Now that Samantha’s baby brother Jack is old enough to have made his allegiance clear to a particular beloved toy, Jen commissioned a portrait of Jack’s monkey blanket-head “Woobie!” Jen asked me to be sure to include the worn white tag attached to the blanket, which, as you might be aware, is the most important part of the toy. When he is falling asleep, Jack rubs the tag against his face (or has one of his parents perform this soothing ritual.) As I’ve mentioned in many other posts, the phenomenon of baby tag obsession is quite familiar to everyone in our household!
Pet Portrait: Oliver, Sophie, and Chex
8″x10″ acrylic, 2012. I knew I was in for a treat when I recieved the commission to paint this trio of pets from Andrew of Keep Albany Boring! Andrew is a phenomenal photographer, so I was sure to have beautiful, well-lit source material to paint from. How endearing is a huge dog who snuggles with cats? Ridiculous. The two cats, Oliver (white and caramel), Chex (black kitten,) and Sophie the dog belong to Andrew’s friends, who are also his roommates. The portrait was a gift for them for Christmas.
Hobbes
8″x10″ acrylic, 2013. I last saw Rayne, the recipient of this portrait, with my own eyes in 1996 when he was a sweet, chubby, tow-headed baby. He’s the son of my college friend Amy, and he’s now ten feet tall and about to enter Cornell University! …. Okay I fainted for a minute, but I’m back. A long-time fan of the Calvin and Hobbes comic strip, Rayne collects the books and has always identified with the equally blonde Calvin. So it’s only natural that his favorite toy would be a stuffed tiger! Amy’s family has a lovely tradition of giving each other gifts at random occasions throughout the year rather than all at once at Christmas, so this will be given to Rayne perhaps as a symbol of transition from childhood into the world of college and beyond. Congratulations Rayne!