Paintings With Soul

Earlier this month I was pleased to learn that my online vendor was offering cloth facemasks printed with my artwork. What a fantastic way to brighten up an outing! You can order   here   - first choose the image desired (images are grouped by category/subject matter) then the item (facemask). And if you have made a special request for a particular image, I've not forgotten about you - I should get to them this week, and will send you an email when it's completed. Thanks so very much! Studio News from April 2020 Things continue to run smoothly here at the Santini's. The girls are done with their online courses, as last week was final exams, so we have a bit of mad time before summer studies pick up again. We are making the most of the sunshine and the dogs are clocking lots of miles alongside us. I've been working steadily on commissions (thank you so much to those of you who have reached out to start your projects!). I have a wonderful variety of ...

Shall we recap? Yesterday, in celebration of little Mona Lisa's 1st birthday, I began a kitten lesson painting. You can see what was accomplished in  my blog entry from Monday . Picking up where I left off, I began laying glazes* down on the background/floor. (*A glaze is a transparent layer of paint which allows the layers underneath to peek through, while also creating an illusion of "floating" brushwork.) Multiple layers of glaze have reduced the color saturation of the yellow and orange without reducing any of the "shimmering" effect they created. I also started putting more color into the kitten, molding and sculpting her form with my brushwork. Working from a 1" flat to a smaller 1/4", I finished Mona out with a handful of carefully placed whiskers and fur. There's no need to paint all of them - the viewers eye will fill in the necessary details. And here she is, all finished:  "You Are...

"Momma and Me," mounted on a silk covered board and framed in a handsome black molding with gilt trim. Available for purchase.   My framer's hubby beefed to me a few years back that he was no fan of how close I took my compositions to the edge. He struggled with how much of the painting to tuck inside the molding (we're talking less than a 1/4" all around). We both agreed that my work could look better with more breathing room.   I asked him how we might best address this. He suggested I not crop my paintings in as closely, which we both had a good laugh over. Then he went off to play with his tools and see what came to mind.   And this is what he devised - a floating frame environment where my work (painted on flat panels) is roughly centered and mounted to a scrap of linen or silk covered matboard. This board then gets framed in a fabulous box he builds (also from scraps - molding scraps, that is).   I love that I am using ...

  Tete-a-Tete sneak a peek at them on my website Pictured above, Tete-a-Tete, acrylic on cradled panel (sides are raw wood, making for a beautiful contemporary presentation, framing optional), 20”x20”x1”, $1400 plus s&h to the first asking nicely. The link above will take you directly to my website where you can make them all yours. Please note that this painting will ship at the end of August 2025. Questions? Just   reach out . Took a quick break from painting Deer to celebrate Dahlia season. Yes, my beauties have begin to bloom and yes, I am utterly obsessed with them. Also…… this painting is one of the demonstration pieces for my fall   in person workshop . Wanna learn how I piece together the things I love while dancing between drawn and painted marks? then register at the link above to reserve your easel and you’ll be set for three days of utter magic. We’ll work side by side in an intimate setting, learning how to create intuitively and improvisationally, while ...

"Sun Salutation," 20" x 10", acrylic on canvasboard, dog portrait of an Australian Cattle Dog. Proceeds from the sale of this painting will be donated to my local shelter, The Oakland Pet Adoption Center as well as Best Friends Animal Sanctuary. Inquiries may come to me . After a gorgeous walk with Finnigan (my dog) this morning, I came home wanting to paint something that was all about sun worship. This piece is much larger than how I typically work, but my love for the sunshine today was enormous and could not be contained in a smaller painting. This isn't Finni but another cattle dog rescue named Arrow. Cattle dogs are an acquired taste (I think that could safely be said about a number of breeds), but once you are owned by one, you are seriously hooked. Arrow's family and ours are both caught fast. Thank you to Judy Wood (she's an artist too) for sharing Arrow's photos with me. I need to also extend a big thank you to Best F...

"Doggles," 4" x 8", mixed breed terrier portrait, acrylic on canvasboard. Inquiries may always come to me via email. I've had this photo in my to-paint pile for about 2 years now. Originally I had wanted to paint her nice and big, but ultimately changed my mind. I've learned to appreciate the value of an intimately sized painting. Seems like the dog's joy and the sunshine grows more potent when compacted. I anticipate that this painting will sell fairly quickly - my terrier pieces usually do (thank you to all my terrier collectors!!!). Did you know that subscribers to the Painting a Dog a Day newsgroup receive the paintings several hours before they are posted to the blog, thus getting advance purchasing opportunities? If you are already receiving the Dog-a-Day paintings via email, you are already part of this privileged group and I thank you. If someone has forwarded "Doggles" to you, and you would like to be one of the f...

To properly celebrate the kitten's 1st birthday, I thought I'd take one of my demonstrations from the recent workshop and finish it off as a lesson painting. Enjoy!   One of the first things I talk about with my students is taking artistic license, modifying reference photos to improve on the composition AND make the image more lifelike (because photos will chromatically flatten the scene and make highlights and shadows exaggerated and dull). Here are some of the changes I consciously chose before laying brush to canvas: I plan on contrasting the blue and lavender tabby with the honeyed orange floor. I am tilting her head just a bit towards the viewer to create an oval/round shape out of her tail and body. I've also shifted the grain of the wood to run at a diagonal, thus creating a balance to the angle of her body. I will remove the distracting elements in the background. I will further separate the far ground shadows from her own, creating a sliver of lighter space...

    It's nearly impossible to schedule any sort of workshop in the summertime that works with everyone's calendar. There's vacations and sunshine and working parents and travel sports teams and watermelon, and frankly, I can't blame anyone for choosing those sorts of things over taking a class (even though my physical class IS in a toy store).   I still wanted to tailor my offering to somehow flex around everyone's schedule. I spent some time on the back porch, just listening to the birdsong and wondering when life got so darned busy. I got all melancholy recalling the long summer days of my childhood - melty popsicles, the smell of hot pavement, the sting of sprinkler water on sunburned skin, the excitement of the mail's arrival (was there anything for ME?) - and BING - AirMail Journaling was born!   I've had the most fabulous time designing five entirely new lesson plans for this summer's journaling adventure. These...

check them out, take one home At left “Berna Pup,” 8”x8”, $525 and at right “Sunshine,” 6”x8,” $470. Both of these paintings are acrylic on flat museum quality panels, available at my website through the above link. S&H inside the contiguous US is on me. Hawaiian, Alaskan and Canadian shipping available at additional cost. 20 years ago I began my commitment to daily painting, starting the pet portrait project Painting a Dog a Day. Shortly in, the project went viral (viral wasn’t even a thing 20 years back!), and   within days I had an 18 month long wait list for daily paintings . Over the years I developed a unique style and fresh approach that was eagerly anticipated by thousands of collectors. It was a lot of fun until it wasn’t - I burned out around 2017 and have done very few pet portraits since. Until recently. I snuck out to visit my friends at   Kara Bullock Art School   earlier this month and we filmed my next online workshop. Of which the above two paintings ...