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THE DAILY ASTORIAN • FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 12, 2016
‘THE EYES HAVE IT’
heavy water. I work in dry brush. I’m able to
get more depth this way, more color and more
detail.”
Peninsula artist nurtures
talent for portraying the
souls of cats and dogs
:RUNiQJ Zith a IeOiQe assistaQt
By LYNDA LANE
For EO Media Group
L
ONG BEACH, Wash. — For artist
Annie Unwin, few projects evoke as
much intense emotion, in her and the
recipients alike, as pet portraits. Sure, she
does striking landscapes that lead one’s eye
and mind right into the scene, but when she
paints a detailed likeness of a dog or cat, espe-
cially if it is one the owner has recently lost, it
tugs at heart strings.
7he ¿rst time she attempted a canine por-
trait, Unwin recalled, “was when a friend
of ours lost her teenage dog named ‘Bub-
bles.’ She posted his photo on Facebook and
I thought, I’ve got to do something for her,
because she was just heartbroken.”
From that Facebook photo, Unwin noticed
that Bubbles had beautiful features and she
worked hard at rendering them in a result-
ing painting. At that point, she didn’t tell the
grieving owner what she was up to. But an
opportunity was coming up, as a Peninsula
Arts Association show was being hung the
very weekend the painting was completed.
So, Unwin made sure it was on the wall.
Then, she threw a hint to Bubbles’ owner.
“I told her to come to the PAA show, that
I had something to show her,” she said. The
woman came, looked at the painting of her
beloved Bubbles and, Unwin said, “We both
just stood there and cried. She was so touched
and she said, ‘Now, I’ve got him forever.’”
After that, other friends said ¿nal good-
byes to their old pets and Unwin also sur-
prised them with portraits. One was of a
cat, Luke, that a high school friend had lost.
Unwin sent her a painting of Luke and the
woman responded, by saying, “I can’t ever
repay this.”
A pet lover herself, Unwin realizes that
losing an animal “is like losing one of your
children.” And every time someone reacts
with such appreciative emotion to one of her
pet portraits, she cries. “It’s so touching to
me. I love being able to do that.”
Soon after painting some as gifts, pet por-
trait commissions started rolling in. Some of
the animals were still alive and thriving, some
weren’t. But whatever the circumstances,
Unwin has always loved painting them.
Photos by Lynda Lane/For EO Media Group
The eyes have it. Through precise rendering of an animal’s eyes, Unwin says she can show
its personality in her pet portraits.
EaUOy iQteUest Oate staUt
The eyes have it
For Unwin, capturing a pet’s personal-
ity depends on how well she can render the
eyes.
“Their eyes fascinate me,” she said. As one
example, she held up a painting of a Maine
Coon cat named “Aimee,” who lives with
her owner in Germany, as one of that own-
er’s all-time-favorite kitties. For this por-
trait, Unwin worked off a photo of Aimee that
was on Facebook. She commented about the
feline’s “beautiful golden eyes that are her
essence.”
Painting a pet portrait from a photo is what
Unwin prefers, as long as it’s a quality photo
to begin with, especially one that clearly
shows the animal’s eyes. And, she said, “I
like the picture shot slightly slated, so there is
some kind of light and dark and hue.”
Unwin and her spouse of 29 years, Jim, are
both accomplished photographers. If some-
one who wants a pet portrait is local, Unwin
said she would have no problem with shoot-
Even with dry brush, Unwin does have
to use some water, especially for applying
washes or just rinsing out brushes. One of
the Unwin family cats, a striped male named
“Gabby,” is a self-appointed assistant who
will pester her into giving him the attention
he is so sure he deserves. He tries to drink the
brush water and has walked across wet paint-
ings with no hesitation.
Unwin actually calls her studio her “craft
room” and it doubles as a guest bedroom. If
Gabby is loitering on the desk when she’s
painting, Unwin admitted she has to be ¿rm.
“I just have to say, ‘No! Down!.’ He’ll get
on the bed and face the closet door, like he’s
pouting. But that’s his punishment and he
knows he has the option of sitting down and
behaving himself.”
Anyone who has ever visited the Unwin
home knows Gabby. He likes being in the
middle of everything. He crawls up on key-
boards in Jim Unwin’s computer room and
before closing a laptop, Jim has to be sure the
cat’s tail is out of the way.
Gabby was found abandoned, sitting in the
middle of a road, by Unwin’s son about four
years ago. “There was nobody around,” Annie
Unwin said.
The other Unwin cat, a Maine Coon named
“Patsy,” stays out of any action she can avoid.
But at least with Gabby’s persistence and
Patsy’s aloof personality, Unwin has a wealth
of cat eyes in the house, if she wants to study
them up close and personal.
Annie Unwin, at the kitchen table of her rural Long Beach, Wash., home. She does several
mock-ups of her paintings, before doing the final work. This was a pet portrait commission.
ing the photos herself, but will she ever ask
a pet to pose? Absolutely not, she said. “You
can’t have a dog or cat sit and pose like you
could with a person. They’ll move or jump
down.”
Three days a week, Unwin works at The
Picture Attic for Jean Nitzel, who also stresses
the importance of quality photos for portrait
reference. Nitzel commented that Unwin is a
stickler for detail, “And she’ll keep at it until
she gets it just right.” The proper likeness
is, indeed, much more attainable when good
photography enters the picture.
One case of good photos led to an Unwin
triple-dog portrait, a commission from the
owner of a Boxer, an expressive Shar Pei and
a pit bull. Working from three separate pic-
tures, she put them all in the same painting.
0RFNXSs ¿Ust
As part of her penchant for getting details
right, Unwin does as many mock-ups as
needed before working on the ¿nal portrait. In
the case of the three-dog portrait, she recalled
that she did six mock-ups. Each dog had a dif-
ferent degree of dif¿culty to consider. The pit
bull was the hardest to render, but the most
fun of the three, Unwin said, was the Shar Pei
with its deep distinctive wrinkles, which, she
said, made for more character.
Unwin did this portrait in pencil and
then “added a watercolor wash in the back-
ground and foreground, so it gave them a bit
of contrast.”
With some portraits, she stays with total
watercolor and explained that she is not a typ-
ical user of that medium, “in that I don’t use
As a child, Unwin was interested in draw-
ing, coloring with crayons and just general
projects, but later, other interests took hold
and she said she just got away from art com-
pletely. But about 25 years ago, that changed.
“I was working in an of¿ce job that was
really stressful,” she recalled. “I came home
one day and Jim said, ‘Annie, go take a class
some place to de-stress.’ So I went to the local
college and signed up for a watercolor class.
When I ¿rst started, I thought, there’s no way
I’m going to be able to do this.”
But the instructor encouraged her to stay
with it, saying, “I can see you’ve got a pen-
chant for color.”
Unwin not only stuck with it, but started
taking more classes — drawing, learning per-
spective, pastels and other methods. Her art
abilities and interests “just kind of snow-
balled from there.” At the time, they were liv-
ing in Oregon, so she and Jim joined a local
art group in West Linn. They also entered
some festivals and county fairs. Jim, known
for his woodcarving and Annie, heavily into
drawing and painting, won their share of blue
ribbons.
AGviFe tR SURFUastiQatRUs
Here on the peninsula, with its active art
community, Unwin often hears people talk
about trying to muster the courage to “do
art.” Some, she said, shyly announce that they
can’t even draw a stick ¿gure. “I tell them
it doesn’t matter. Everybody starts from the
beginning. Very few people are born on this
planet with an inert ability to create art work.
It comes through learning.”
When Unwin started taking all those
classes in 1990, she said, “I was like a sponge.
I just soaked up everything that I could get my
hands on.”
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