Happy New Year 2026 to all of our amazing clients and readers of our blog. We know that it has been an awfully long time since we’ve had time to write a personal blog post. Over the years we have managed to send one out once a month, every month, without fail. However 2025 was a little different for us. We thought this was a good time to update everyone with what’s been happening here in the last year.
Before we explain, we wanted to chat a bit about work. Work is going incredibly well and we are delighted with the amount of commissions we have received. Not only in the latter part of 2025 but to be booked up to June this year is incredible. We are slightly behind. We both managed to get our portraits completed for Christmas deadlines although I am behind on two drawings that I am working on as we speak before starting my new commissions for this year.
Work was quiet in the early part of 2025. Chatting to a few other artists in our field, we weren’t the only ones with little work. However it gave us time to work on our two websites. Our main site – Pet Portraits and our dedicated pencil site. We wanted to get them in tip top condition. Which was one of the first reasons why personal blog posts didn’t get done. I create our websites by hand, we don’t have any kind of templated site, so it was quite time consuming. Although these days I have the help of AI! It writes all the HTML code, CSS and scripts etc for me!! All the behind the scenes things we did seemed to make a difference and we are truly grateful.
So What’s Been Happening??
So moving on to what has been happening in our personal life. Unfortunately, someone very close to us suffered a stroke in mid 2025. We had just finished all the website work and was about to enjoy the early summer months with some well earned downtime, when this happened. From that moment on our life changed significantly. We are now caring for them on a daily basis along with working on our portraits and trying to live a normal life.
Both Nicholas and I were extremely busy from September time and only in the last few days have things calmed down a bit. We were on very tight schedules for our drawings and paintings, we did not want to let anyone down. Then of course we had to try to navigate the usual Christmas obligations around caring for someone with specific needs. This meant things had to slide. We didn’t have time to send Christmas cards, nor did we have a Christmas tree, only a few quick decorations. Nicholas and I didn’t get to make our usual festive Christmas video nor take photographs for a Christmas blog post. Time in our day was extremely short with working full time, managing drs and hospital appointments and in general just trying to maintain life.
Christmas – Sort of!
But! We did manage to celebrate in our own way. More importantly we managed to celebrate a special 75th birthday with friends and family to and make it a really special day for the person we are looking after. And to me that seems much more important. Time is short – time in our day is limited but also we only have one go at life. We are more aware of that now than ever.
As we move into 2026, this year is going to continue to be different. Our ever changing daily routines will continue to mould into our new way of life. We have a lot of our work to create between now and June and we can’t thank our clients enough for being patient with us in these circumstances.
I admire anyone in our position as caring for somebody is not an easy task. It is tiring, can be mentally exhausting, constantly thinking about medical issues and worrying about appointments. However, looking after another human being and keeping them alive is far more important in my opinion, than many other trivial things in life.
A New Year!
So this year is a New Year and I am very much looking forward to getting back to my desk and starting my pencil drawings. Nicholas is itching to get his first oil painting started. We should be starting artwork on the second week of January as we have a lot of admin to complete in this coming week.
I’m unsure when I will be able to write another personal blog post. Drawings come first, but I have still been writing business posts in my downtime. The latest being about finding pet portrait artists using AI. They don’t currently go out in any newsletters so please do keep checking our blog for new posts if you are interested. It’s something I enjoy. I love to research and write about the business of pet portraits and all the changes AI is throwing upon us. I will try to perhaps do a personal one quarterly and add some photos when we have had some nice days out.
For our regular readers, and those who have been in touch to ask if we are okay, thank you so much for your kind thoughts. I think the first question people have been asking is…is Lily okay! Yes! She is doing really well, she is now 12 and I believe in human years is 96! Although she sleeps a lot more than she used to, she still has her mischievous moments. We absolutely love her to bits. I will add photos of two festive Lily grooms by our amazing groomer Dylan along with the snowfall today. Yes it has snowed here! We really appreciate the lovely wishes that you have been sending and we do think about you all.
Happy New Year 2026
Both Nicholas and myself would like to wish you all the very best for a HEALTHY and Happy New Year 2026. We always love hearing from you, so please leave a comment below, or message us via our form.
Melanie, Nicholas and Lily!
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