a special father's day gift

quentin wanted to give his daddy something very special. he knows his daddy misses abby very much, so he had a great idea to have a painting done to remember her by. he asked me for help - since he doesn't know how to use the internet. we looked for someone to do a custom pet portrait. if you google that, you find all kinds of artists, but most charge several hundred dollars for a small painting. luckily i remembered that i had seen custom pet paintings offered on ebay in the past. we looked there and found many more reasonably priced. then we just had to find someone whose style we liked. many of the ones we found were not our style, but after looking through her portfolio, we found one we loved and purchased it. it was a very easy process - we just had to email a photo that we wanted replicated, and a few others for the artist to get a good sense for her coloring and personality. this is the photo we started with. it was the very first picture of abby we ever saw. someone from the beagle rescue took it and it's just so abby. it's totally her "please feed me, please please please" face, a face we know quite well. we also got to pick a new background, since the background in the actual photo is just a hardwood floor and a dirty old towel. we selected tomato plants since they seemed to be abby's favorite. our plants in richmond didn't stand a chance once abby discovered how tasty tomatoes were. this is the sketch the artist sent back to me a day or two later. i love the tomatoes hanging out of her mouth!

and this is the finished product! i absolutely loved it and thought it was perfect. it was so hard to keep it a secret, but we did it! notice the hidden lemon in the top left corner? that's an homage to abby's lemon coloring! we've got a custom frame on order and as soon as that comes in, abby will be on our bedroom wall, smiling down on us forever!