Melanie & Nicholas Pet Portraits

Welcome to Melanie’s May Monthly News which will mostly comprise of the completion of our front garden renovations…at last! The photo below, even though a fairly old photo, shows the old stone wall well. It was once a lime washed white wall, beautifully tidy and neat. We know this as we have seen old black and white photos of how…

Welcome to Melanie’s April Monthly News where we have been a little further afield this month. All thanks to the relaxing of restrictions, plus we have been pretty busy to boot too! Cute photos of Lily to start this months blog post. I came home one morning early from running and Lily greeted me at the door as per usual.…

Welcome to Melanie’s March monthly news where we have still been in lockdown! No exciting photos as such this month as we haven’t been very far. The good news is thought we have just come out of lockdown in the last few days, so we are able to move around and travel as required. We live in a pretty touristy…

Welcome to Melanie’s February Monthly News, in a month where we have had quite a lot of rain….! We had a deluge of about 3 days and nights of constant hard rain and it created a surge of water in the local rivers. They burst their banks and flooded across roads and into villages and towns. The photos below were…

Welcome to Melanie’s January Monthly News and another month has whizzed by. Well I say whizzed, we are still in lockdown and so haven’t really been anywhere exciting….. well anywhere really! Our weather has been pretty bad, we have survived Storm Christoph and I haven’t seen as much water for a long time. The town where I do my shopping…

Welcome to Melanie’s December Monthly News – the last blog of the year! I’m wring this on New Years Eve and I think if you ask most people today, they will surely say, let’s hope 2021 will be a better and healthier one for us all. It’s been quite a year and although we are currently in lockdown here in…

Welcome to Melanie’s November Monthly News. It has been a busy month, in fact the last 4 weeks have literally flown and it seems only a few days ago I sat down to write our October post. The winter is drawing nearer and the colder weather is arriving gradually. The crisp, misty and frosty days are my favourite kind of…

Welcome to Melanie’s October Monthly News! I gave the game away a little with the feature image didn’t I! Yes, we have had babies! It has been a very ‘eggciting’ time. Consequently out of the 6 eggs we had incubated, 4 hatch perfectly. Well, I say perfectly, the last one was peeping in the egg with a little hole all…

Welcome to Melanie’s September monthly news with a little run down of whats been happening here this month. The first piece of news is quite sad, one of my hens died and so Mrs Chortle is the one and only left now from my original brood of chicks 7 years ago. She is quite lonely and so comes up to…

Welcome to Melanie’s August Monthly News about what we have been up to this month. Often here in Wales we have beautiful weather all the way up to August and then it seems to be somewhat of a washout. We have had storms, winds, rain and more storms this month. It hasn’t been such good weather for the tourists that…

Welcome to Melanie’s July monthly news, another month has flown by again and here we are with lots more photos and news. Lily and myself have still been doing our early morning trundles down the lane and have come across some amazing sights on our travels. My favourite photo so far is the one below. The sun is coming up…

Welcome to Melanie’s June Monthly News! We hope that all of our readers are being able to stay well and healthy across the globe. Nicholas and myself are both fine here and still working hard. We are still pretty much in a lockdown however we have been able to travel slightly further afield this month and so have a few…

Welcome to Melanie’s May Monthly News! And if there was ever a tongue twister that might be a good one! We are still in lockdown here in Wales. We can only go as far as 5 miles for recreational trips but obviously can go shopping. 5 miles isn’t really a very long way when you live rurally like we do.…

Welcome to Melanie’s April Monthly News. We usually add photos of our little jaunts and expeditions with Lily, but like most people all over the world, we haven’t been anywhere! The weather has been absolutely beautiful here though so instead, we have been doing lots of work in the garden since our latest three week lockdown, even without getting supplies…

Welcome to Melanie’s March monthly news. Well all I can say is that this months news is nothing like any other month I have blogged about! What unprecedented times we are living in. To be truthful, our every day lives haven’t changed much at all. We are very lucky in that we still have plenty of work. We are still…

Welcome to Melanie’s February Monthly News. Well, February has been a stormy one! We have had winds, rain, more winds, more rain, hail, thunder and a lot more winds and rain. How crazy has it been this month weather wise here in the uk and of course parts of Europe too. There has been a lot of flooding here in…

Welcome to Melanie’s January Monthly News – Happy New Year 2020! We hope that you all had a lovely festive season and New Year. We are now in our 23rd year for our pet portraits business! This month has flown so fast. Work was busy before Christmas and has overspilled in to January quite nicely keeping us out of mischief…

Welcome to Melanie’s December Monthly News! Merry Christmas to everyone! As you may have noticed we haven’t posted any artwork in the last couple of months. Mainly as most of it has been for surprise presents this Christmas. I will be adding them soon, stay tuned for January’s post to see a selection of new work. Also visit our social…

Welcome to Melanie’s November Monthly News. As you can probably imagine it has been very busy here in the studio with portraits for Christmas. However we did manage to get out and about for a couple of days in November. We headed to Barmouth for lunch and another day headed to Stackpole. Stackpole One of our new favourite places is…

Happy Halloween to everyone for October 31st 2019! We love Halloween in our house. My dad grows pumpkins every year back at the smallholding where I grew up. He planted a massive patch this year and grew about 30, including two ginormous ones. So much so, neither of them could be lifted, let alone fit in the car to bring…

Welcome to Melanie’s October News! It has been a busy month with lots of things happening. At the start of the month I had an odd headache bug, then as soon as I felt better, poorly Lily came down with some kind of bug, we have no idea where she got it from. It lasted a couple of weeks and…

Welcome to the Golden Retriever oil painting of H. Nicholas traditionally hand painted the portrait on Italian Linen canvas. Our client commissioned the painting as a Christmas surprise for his wife. We love it when clients get in early for their paintings. Good job too! We are now taking bookings for January. The portrait of H is a 12 x 10…

Welcome to my Pencil Drawing of Bramble. Commissioned by Richard for his wife birthday as a surprise. Framed using our Madison Slate frame. One of my favourite frames for my drawings as the blue slate colours work really well with the graphite pencil tones. Dear Melanie,The frame has really set the picture off, thank you so much for this –…

Welcome to Melanie’s monthly news in September! Where has this month flow to?! I can’t believe it is October already. We are both pretty much fully booked for Christmas portraits, we haven’t even started to think about Christmas ourselves yet. We love it that people are organised though! Our cottage is very nearly back to normal. (renovation post if you…

Welcome to our latest Spaniel oil portrait of Millie. This portrait was completed in August however it wasn’t to be given to the recipient until September so we are just adding it to the blog now. Consequently, we are always careful not to ruin any surprises for our clients! It was commissioned by Peter as a birthday present for his…

Welcome to our most recent cat portraits in oils of Roly. He is a very handsome cat, painted for returning clients in Scotland by Nicholas. Kirstie commissioned the portrait as a gift for her husband’s birthday. Gordon was over the moon with the portrait and you can see a really lovely happy photo of Gordon. Consequently we are absolutely thrilled…

Welcome to Melanie’s August News! We hope that you enjoyed our last months news all about our roof renovations. If you haven’t already taken a peak, you can do here – June & July News. We are thrilled to say our roof is all finished! The scaffolding is down, the garden has been tended and the cottage is painted! It’s…

Welcome to my most exciting project of the year, the Ruffwear logo pet portrait commission. Andrew Geere, the CEO of Ruffwear, called me to discuss commissioning a pencil drawing earlier this year in April. The focus of the portrait would be of Ursula who was the inspiration for the Ruffwear logo back in 1993. A close friend of Patrick Kruse,…

Welcome to our latest Spaniel Pet Portraits oil painting commission of a beautiful spaniel called ‘Kitty Little’ aka ‘Kitkat’! Our client Steve called our studio a few months ago to find out if Nicholas would be able to complete a portrait for an August birthday. We love it when clients think well ahead for their birthday presents! Steve took some beautiful…

Welcome to the latest Golden Retriever Pet Portraits commission of dogs Monty and Mungo. Nicholas was commissioned by clients in Guernsey to paint their two beautiful dogs, one of which Monty, had sadly passed away. The portrait would serve as a wonderful memory of when they were both best friends together. Dear Melanie and Nicholas,The painting has just arrived and…

Welcome to Melanie’s June & July News! It has been extremely busy here in the last couple of months, hence why we didn’t have a blog newsletter last month. As you can see from the photos below we have been busy with more renovations. This promises to be the last. We have completed all of the other planned works over…

Welcome to our latest bespoke oil pet portraits commission. This portrait was commissioned by Jamie and Lubka Hallam of their two gorgeous dogs Bilbo and Mr Kipling. Jamie and Lubka requested a large oil painting of them sitting in their beautiful garden in the South of England. Nicholas created the painting for them at 40 x 30 inches size. Lubka…

Welcome to my latest Cat Pencil Portrait of two cats called Archie and Roly. This portrait is for returning clients Kirstie and Gordon (UK). They previously commissioned a portrait of their beautiful cat Dudly who is sadly no longer with us. You can see him on his dedicated page – oil portrait of Dudley. Kirstie was given the portrait as…

Katie Rampton (UK) commissioned a triple pencil drawing of their three dogs Winston, Alfie and Ziggy for her husbands birthday. She purchased a gift voucher so that Matthew could choose his own photos and design. Matthew was thrilled with his surprise birthday gift and consequently emailed me three of his favourite photos through to see if i could work with…

Welcome to Nicholas’ latest English Bull Dog Portrait in oils on canvas. Mark (USA) contacted us earlier this year to see if Nicholas could create an oil painting of his English Bull Dog with a more natural setting behind. The photo of Rocco was taken in their lounge, however Nicholas very cleverly placed Rocco outside standing in grass. The painting…

Greg Piske, USA, purchased one of our gift vouchers in December 2018 to give to his wife as a Christmas present. Jane was delighted and therefore sent us photos of their horses Finn and Mac for the oil painting. Nicholas was thrilled to receive the photos and as you can see below the painting turned out beautifully. Jane asked for…

Welcome to our Labradoodle pet portrait in oils by Nicholas Beall. This commission was a lovely one for Nicholas to work on. He very much enjoys the larger in depth paintings with full backgrounds however, he also enjoys creating the smaller, single head studies of dogs like the portrait of Luna. He loves to centre all of the focus of…

Welcome to Melanie’s May News which, this month has all been about ponds, frogs, toads, water snails, newts, bees and flowers! Oh and a naughty cat! The photo below shows what the pond looks like as of today! Sitting pretty in the corner of the top cottage garden with its plants… Read on to find out more! So earlier this…

Welcome to Nicholas’ latest oil pet portrait of Boo! Boo’s portrait is a 12 x 10 inches oil painting. Commissioned by Sienna, a lovely client in the UK, who we thoroughly enjoyed working with! We worked with closely with Sienna to get the perfect photo of Boo for the perfect composition for this lovely painting. Sienna also requested a blue…

Welcome to my latest pencil pet portrait of Chloe! Returning client Bob commissioned the pencil pet portrait of Chloe. We have also actually met Bob and Jennifer! They came over to the UK visiting family and took a trip around Wales and came to see us. It was wonderful! They previously commissioned the oil portrait of Lance which you can…

Welcome to Melanie’s April News. What a difference 20 days makes! As you can see from the photo below of our front garden, at the start of April we had an unexpected snow flurry. Woke up to a light covering of white everywhere. Now, here we are at the end of April, scroll down to look at the same patch…

Welcome to Rusty’s Pencil Drawing! The portrait was a 20 x 16 inches drawing commissioned by a client in the USA. My client Verity took a number of photos of Rusty out in her garden on a sunny day from a variety of angles. Consequently, this was really helpful and allowed me to really get a feel for Rusty and…

Welcome to our latest Cottage Oil Portrait with Stella. Our client Richard, had one particular favourite photo he wanted to use for the portrait. This was his dog Stella in their garden with their cottage in the background. Nicholas painted Stella’s portrait in oils on Italian linen canvas at 20 x 16 inches, in good time before the birthday surprise.…

Welcome to the Pencil drawing of Ellie commissioned by returning client Jo and her family. I have been working with Jo’s family for a number of years. You might have recently seen the Cuddly Toy of Piggy drawing she commissioned for her niece just before Christmas. Consequently Jo’s niece loved her portrait. I received a beautiful photo of her and…

Welcome to Melanie’s March News! We actually haven’t been anywhere of note this month. It’s all been about getting portraits completed for deadlines. However whilst we have been busy bees in our studio…the sun has shone outside in the garden and has started to make the everything flourish. This is my favourite time of year and very different weather to…

Welcome to Freddie’s Dog Portrait in Oils on canvas. Our clients, her win the UK, wanted to have an oil painting at 14 x 11 inches. Vanessa and her family emailed two photos for Nicholas to use, one for the pose and another for colouring. The photo of Freddie was an outdoor photo with a green background. Consequently, a muted…

Welcome to my latest Alsatian Pencil Drawing of Nash. The portrait was hand drawn by myself for clients in North Carolina, USA. Mike wanted to have a large sized portrait, which also worked well for his breed of dog. Mike emailed me his favourite photo of Nash and it was perfect to work from. In addition he sent others for…

Welcome to the Oil Painting of Bob. Isn’t he gorgeous! Nicholas traditionally hand painted Bob at 16 x 12 inches. The painting is an on Italian linen canvas. It was painted for a lovely client here in Wales called Sharon. Sadly Bob is no longer with us, so Sharon wanted to commemorate his life with an oil painting. We received…

Welcome to Melanie’s February News! This month has flown by again. I cant quite believe we are at the end of February already. We have had a busy month, we have been to a few places although mainly detours when on errands so no actual proper days out as such. Having said that we did have to go to Cornwall…

Welcome to my latest Vizsla pencil drawing of Kiwi. Catherine commissioned the portrait, who was a returning client. Very sadly Catherine’s good friend lost her young Vizsla, Kiwi, in a tragic car accident. Consequently the family were devastated. Catherine felt that it would be really lovely to have a drawing of Kiwi to give as a gift. Catherine opted to…

Welcome to Nicholas’ latest cat pet portraits in oil. Katie contacted us asking if we would be able to paint her cat Shelly in oils at 16 x 12 size. Katie has two photos of Shelly, one that wasn’t such good quality, however the second photo was perfect! It was a high resolution photo, clear and in focus, therefore it…

Welcome to my latest Black Labrador portrait of Merry. Nicholas Williams commissioned the pencil drawing of Merry as a gift for his wife’s birthday. Nicholas took a few photos of Merry while out on a walk. Consequently, he managed to capture Merry’s happy smile as you can see in the portrait below. The pencil drawing was completed at 18 x…

Welcome to our latest oil portrait of Blu, a gorgeous little dog commissioned by Jayne and her family. In actual fact Jaynes family purchased one of our Gift A Portrait Vouchers for Jaynes birthday. Jayne and her family sadly lost Blu and they all missed his tremendously. They felt a portrait of him would keep his memory alive and be…

Welcome to Melanie’s January News! Its been a busy month with work, however we did manage to go to a few places this month. Starting with a favourite place of ours called Tenby. I have to say its best visited out of season. It is such a pretty little town, really quaint and full of history that it is inundated…

Welcome to our latest dog oil portrait of Spyder. Nicholas traditionally hand painted Spyder for clients Karen and her family in Ohio, USA. Karen’s husband took some beautiful photos of their dog Spyder specifically for a portrait. Karen initially asked for an 18 x 14 size, however we felt that a bespoke size of 17 x 15 inches size would…

Welcome to my first drawing of the year, a pencil pet portrait montage of Mikey. A lovely client in the USA commissioned the portrait of Mikey. Sadly Mikey passed away last year and so he felt that this Pencil Pet Portrait Montage be a wonderful reminder of Mikey for all of his family. Russell emailed lots of lovely photos of…

Welcome to our Black Labrador Oil Portrait which is the first oil painting of January! It was lovely to get back into the studio and start on the next batch of paintings and drawings. Drinda sadly lost Brhyer in 2018 and therefore the portrait will serve as a wonderful reminder of Brhyer for her family. Drinda is a returning customer…

Welcome to our latest oil portrait commission of Leya and Jack. Matilde contacted us in 2018 to see if we would be able to create an oil portrait for her mum for Christmas. Time was very short as we were very close to December, so we all agreed that although we couldn’t guarantee a Christmas delivery, Nicholas would have just…

Welcome to my latest two bull dog and cow pet portraits. They are two separate portraits for the same client which I completed in December of last year. I have alternated photos of each drawing below, so that you can see different angles as you scroll through the post! Ushi the bull dog was drawn first at 10 x 8…

Welcome to Melanie’s December News! Well, what a month. I literally can’t believe how much work we have completed in the month of December. I’m sure that you can see by the number of our recent blog posts how many we have painted and drawn. Although I still have four portraits to blog!!! So please do stay tuned as I…

Welcome to my latest horse pencil drawing. The portrait of Duker was commissioned by Lizzie as a surprise for her mum Jane. Lizzie ordered a gift a portrait voucher as Jane’s birthday was fairly soon after Lizzies initial contact. She also felt it would be lovely for her mum to be able to choose which photo to use as the basis…

Welcome to my latest artwork of a cuddly toy drawing of Piggy. I absolutely loved drawing Piggy for returning client Jo from the UK, it was so much fun. Jo commissioned the drawing of Piggy as a gift for her niece for Christmas. The drawing was completed by myself in coloured pencil. I used to offer coloured pencil as a…

Welcome to our latest Cat Oil Portrait of Mitzy. Helen in the UK commissioned an oil painting of their family’s beloved cat called Mitzy. It was to be a surprise present for her husband. Sadly Mitzy has passed away and Helen and her family miss her dearly. Mitzy resembled my grandmothers cat when I was a child who was also called…

Welcome to Nicholas’ latest King Charles Spaniel pet portrait. Readers may have noticed that we haven’t posted any of Nicholas’ oil paintings recently. I will be adding them to our blog over the next few days as surprises have been given and frames have arrived! This is the beautiful portrait of Boone that Nicholas painted in October. Cindy and her…

Welcome to Melanie’s monthly news in November! I can’t believe how quickly the months have been flying by. We really haven’t been out and about much at all this month, mainly due to the amount of work we have been doing in the studio. I’m sure you can see judging by how many posts of drawings and paintings we have…

Welcome to my latest Boxer dog drawing of the gorgeous Lola. Linda emailed me a few months ago and asked if I would be able to get a pencil drawing completed and framed for her husbands birthday in November. The timing was going to be close. Linda told her husband John that something exciting was being made for him. She…

Happy Halloween 2018!! Welcome to our Halloween post of 2018. Every year we celebrate Halloween by carving pumpins and decorating our inglenook with them and differnt coloured lights. We started with the front of our cottage putting up christmas coloured lights and having two pumpkins outside. As you can see below we carved two Minions keeping a watchful eye over our garden!…

Welcome to Melanie’s Monthly News in October. Well, it’s definitely autumn! The leaves are falling fast and we took Lily to our favourite woodland walk in the forestry near us. It was full of fallen leaves for Lily to have fun in. The rivers were flowing fast and its definitely a time for wrapping up warm. The photos below were all…

Welcome to my Melanie’s Monthly News in September! As usual, and I always say, it hasn’t the month flown! We have been busy with extra curricular activities in our downtime this month which has been fun. The biggest news was that lily passed her Kennel Club Good Citizens gold test. She has already done her Bronze and Silver and so…

Welcome to Nicholas’ latest cat pet portraits in oils. This is an 18 x 14 inches oil painting completed by Nicholas on Italian Linen canvas commissioned as a surprise gift for Christmas. I think the recipient is going to be delighted! Client Barrie commissioned the oil painting as sadly Tia is no longer with us, so this oil painting will…

Welcome to our post about our pet portraits engraved plaques. We have been working with a new engraving company in the last few months and they are wonderful.  The previous company we worked with for a number of years moved premises. They sadly didn’t engrave any longer which was such a shame. They started to use laser engraving instead. There is…

Welcome to Melanie’s Monthly News in August! This month has flown by again. We haven’t been on many trips this month due to work being uber busy. We did manage to get to the beautiful Llanfsteffan however to take Lily our Tibetan Terrier, for a walk on the beach. It was a treat for her as she had to have…

Welcome to Melanie’s Monthly news in July. Another month has flown by and we have been really busy in the studio painting and drawing portraits. However we have had time to get out and about too. The weather has been absolutely delightful and a real treat. It is never this sunny here in Wales so we took the opportunity to…

Welcome to Melanie’s monthly news in June! It has been an extremely busy month here, which isn’t all that surprising as our lives are just generally busy all year around anyway, there is never a dull moment here! The garden has really flourished now summer is here and the weather is absolutely beautiful. This has to be the warmest weather…