Shaggy Dog Stories

Archive for the ‘art’ Category

Bailie of Bothkennar, whose call name was David, was one of the foundation sires for the Bearded Collie in Britain. Along with Jeannie of Bothkennar (an unrelated bitch whom the kennel owner, Mrs. Willison, received from Scotland when she thought she was getting a Sheltie), Bailie of Bothkennar produced the first Bearded Collie litter to be registered with The Kennel Club.

This little Flash video from the British Pathé film archive, shows sculptor Lavender Dower crafting a rubber model of David as well as the molds for the sculpture. The original newsreel is dated April 6, 1953.

To watch the video, click on the image below. Enjoy!

Another Old Shaggy Dog Story!

This British Pathé newsreel is in color and dates from November of 1956.

If you’re like me, your vast collection of photos (doggy and otherwise) occupies a variety of spaces from tins, bags, and shoe boxes to mega-, giga-, and terabytes on your computer hard drive(s). You probably even have some absolutely stunning photos, or shots of favorite memories, that you have no idea what to do with besides store them. Heck, Mother’s and Father’s Days are coming up, and everyone needs useful ideas for gifts.

The nice folks at EasyCanvasPrints.com recently invited me to try their simple four-step process to transform a favorite photo into terrific wall art. It took longer to choose a photo than it did to use the Canvas Designer — and if you need a nice gift fast, you should definitely take Easy Canvas Prints for a drive.

Step One: Choose Your Canvas Size and Options

I decided to start with this photo, which I took when Dinah was about 9 months old. This has been one of my favorite photos of the ones I’ve taken. I probably should have picked one of her show-win photos or something more fabulous, but I just happen to love this one.

"Psst... wanna hear a secret?"

I chose the 11″x14″ gallery wrap (but you may choose the standard wrap if you want to frame the canvas).

Step 2: Upload and Size Your Photo

Easy Canvas Prints has a built-in quality checker for uploaded photos. If your uploaded photo shows an image quality of Poor or even Fair, you’ll probably be disappointed with the quality of the canvas print. If that happens, there are a few things you can do:

• Rescan the photo at a higher resolution, or use Photoshop to improve the dpi value as much as possible. With low-res photos, you might not get them perfect, but get them to the best they can be.
• Try a smaller size canvas. A less-than-perfect photo will probably look sharper on a smaller print. Don’t be afraid to try the custom sizes to see if they work better.
• Easy Canvas Prints offers a photo retouching service, if you’re not a Photoshop do-it-yourselfer. These options appear later on in the process.

Step 3: Choose Your Borders

If you plan to frame your print, you don’t need to care very much what the edges of your mounted canvas will look like. If you plan to use the gallery wrap and just hang your masterpiece on the wall, you probably do. Easy Canvas Prints offers a variety of edge options, including coordinating solid colors.

Optional Step 3A: Need Color Finishing or Photo Retouching?

If you don’t, then click on through. You can transform a color photo to sepia-tone or black-and-white for a nominal charge, or request minor or major retouching to a photo for a little extra. If you have one of those gorgeous, scratchy old ancestor photos or another irreplaceable photo that needs some help to be lovely, a little cosmetic work might be worth it.

Step 4: And Finally… Check Out!

You don’t need to hear how to do this, but Easy Canvas Prints offers you one last chance to see a proof of your order or to modify the canvas. The proof includes the right edge, so you can see a snippet of the edge treatment you ordered.

All Easy Canvas Prints are printed and assembled in the USA (Texas, to be exact) and arrive by FedEx at a speed that really could take your breath away. My canvas arrived 3 days later.

The canvas print’s colors were absolutely true to the original photo, and the details were just as sharp and perfect as they were in the original photo. If you have any issues with your print, Easy Canvas Prints will absolutely make it right. If I have just one teeny issue with mine, it’s that someone must have handled the upper right corner of the canvas a little roughly because it arrived slightly stretched… but with all the collected wisdom of my occasional terms in art school, I fixed it quickly enough. Easy Canvas Prints would have done it for me or replaced it for no charge, but I wanted my canvas to be here for the blog post. (I did take a photo of the canvas, but it just doesn’t do justice to the finished product.)

I would absolutely return to EasyCanvasPrints.com for a quick gift or for a lasting memory. As a matter of fact, I’m considering making canvas prints of some of our better show photos. Now, all we need to figure out is where to display them. AdditionalWallSpace.com might be my next stop.

Here, give them a try — and brighten your own walls with your photographic treasures!

Canvas Prints

Dinah has spent her entire show career being photographed and looking pretty, but she’s never actually been a model — at least, not like her Beardie friends Taggerty (who modeled for FetchDog) and Maddie (who has been in at least a couple of PetEdge catalogs). Her distant cousin Maggie (whose mom is a Breaksea dog) modeled for PetEdge a while ago, too.

When she was a puppy, she won a free “makeover” at a local grooming shop and a space in the now-defunct Dog In Sight magazine for looking like this…

The Dainty Princess Pigpen!

For the record, there was an “after” photo shoot to match the “before”…

Photo by Dog in Sight magazine, I think.

When she was a little older, she appeared in the Seacoast Edition of the City Puppies books…

Photo by Nick Diana

Now, at the age of 4, the Princess has accidentally begun a modeling career of a different, but ancient and honorable, kind: She (and two of the boys) have emerged as subjects for fine-art paintings. This could probably be dismissed if only one painter were translating her lovely image to canvas, but two painters (who live across the country from each other, and who have never met) are currently creating works of art featuring Herself — and I didn’t commission either!

It all started out innocently enough. My friend Jeannie, whom I met through a mutual friend who is also an artist, was looking for some nice photos of Bearded Collies to paint. Shelties are her breed, and she’s done bushels of Shelties, reams of Collies, and a number of other breeds as well. Her pieces hang in private collections all over the world. Our friend put us in touch, and I shipped her a bunch of my photos to work from. I’ve probably given her enough pictures of my dogs and those of our mutual friend so that she can spend her entire career painting Beardies!

First, she created this portrait of Dinah and Seamus…

Ahoy There! Copyright by Shamrock Artworks.

Next, she took a photo I did of Badger and rendered it into what might possibly be her best piece…

Beardie Waits. Copyright by Shamrock Artworks.

More of my Dinah and Seamus photos, plus another of Badger, emerged on a Beardie-themed birdhouse…

Dinah running. Copyright by Shamrock Artworks

Incidentally, Jeannie is always looking for subjects of all breeds. If you’re looking to commission a portrait of your dog, have a sign created with your breed and kennel name, or find prints and notecards of the various paintings Jeannie has done, then definitely check out her Shamrock Artworks website.

Now, another painter out in San Diego is using Dinah as a model for a painting of hers. Turns out Jan’s the sister of of a friend of mine in Seattle who has Beardies, and she fell in love with a photo of Dinah on Facebook. She asked permission to use Dinah’s photo as a subject for a painting for her sister, so now Dinah will also be immortalized by an artist on the West Coast! Jan has promised me a print of the finished work. I can’t wait to add it to the gallery!