Hi there!

Welcome to my Etsy store.

I started doing children's portraits around 5 years ago when a friend told me he'd been doing stenciled artworks of famous singers and selling them on Ebay. The whole idea sounded fun (and yes, a bit wacky) and I thought it sounded like an interesting thing to try. At the time I had no idea what stenciling was, but I went online, read a few tutorials and started playing around with spray-paints in the garage.

My brother then asked if I could do a portrait of our nephew as a stencil, and my Etsy store was born! I started off doing hand-writing stencils and portraits, and one of my stencil tutorials was featured on Etsy's "How-to Tuesday". Here´s the link if you´d like to see it - https://blog.etsy.com/en/2010/how-tuesday-stenciled-handwriting-art/

A few years ago I moved to a new house where I didn't have a garage and was unable to spray-paint my portraits. So now I design the portraits as usual -- on my laptop (using my trusty Wacom pen and tablet!) -- and then send the design off for printing and shipping with a US-based printer. In some ways this is better for my customers, because the portraits now arrive already stretched and ready to hang on a wall.

I absolutely love doing these portraits and thought I would share a couple of stories of the favorite ones I have worked on.

I think my most moving moment as an artist was doing a portrait for a mother whose son had died. As we sent emails back and forward, we talked about his facial features - his broad smile and curly hair - so that I could be sure I'd portrayed them accurately. When I asked her what colors she'd like the portrait to be she told me what her son's favorite colors had been, and I sent her some drafts of the portrait in those color combinations.

In one email the mother said how special it was to be spending this time discussing her son's features, his personality, and talking about his favorite colors. She said that she never had the chance to do this anymore (because her son had died some years before) and that it meant a lot to her. I was really moved by her comments, and they made me realise that the process of doing a portrait can be as valuable to a client as the end result.

My other favorite portrait was for a father who was a US soldier stationed in Afghanistan. He wanted a portrait of his family to give to them as a suprise Christmas present.

I sent him some drafts with the portrait in different colors and he wrote back to say that he and his army buddies had spent a long time sitting around his computer discussing which precise shade of pink would be better on his daughter's t-shirt! It was a lot of fun to do this portrait and later to hear back from the father about how thrilled his family was with their surprise gift.

So, as you can probably tell from these stories: I love doing portraits! It is wonderful to be able to be involved in creating an artwork that may be hung on a wall for generations. If you have any questions about getting a child's portrait done please don't hesitate to message me.