Month: November 2022

Animals have been the subject of admiration of artists since prehistoric times. We find animal drawings in ancient caves and animal mosaics in the ruins of classic antiquity. From Egyptian culture through Roman times to the Middle Ages, animals in sculpture and paintings can represent many different things like deities, social castes, or a particular energy. 

This shows us that people have always been fascinated by the animal world. Paintings of animals in the wild have used different techniques to signalize their power, strength, graciousness or their unique beauty. Famous artists like Claude Monet and Van Gogh had birds for subjects in their painting, while Frida Kahlo painted her pet monkeys in several of her paintings. 

In modern times, many famous artists have deployed their painting skills to honor their furry friends. Here we bring you some examples that have become widely known. 

Yes, it’s a simple one. But it still shows the great artist’s love for his long-bodied dachshund named Lump. Lump came for a visit to Picasso’s Cannes mansion with his old friend and photographer David Douglas Duncan, and had the painter fall in love with him so much that he had to stay. It’s said that he soon earned his place at the artist’s dinner table, and ate from a plate embellished with another one of his own portraits done by Picasso’s hand. 

Munch’s expressionism often served to transfer his emotional and mental anguish onto his paintings, most famous of them being The Scream. Munch had a team of dog companions he even to took to the cinema, so it’s no surprise that they figured in several of his paintings. The colour schemes and techniques in some of them seem to tell the same mood of social withdrawal and anxiety that Munch suffered from.  

The famous pop artist was initially a cat lover but once he got his first dog, the dachshund named Archie, the little sausage dog became his loyal companion even to events like press conferences. Archie eventually got a playmate, Amos, and Warhol showed them his love with a series of portraits in his signature silkscreen printing technique. Even Warhol’s friend’s pets could enjoy some fame by the grace of his talent. Portrait of Maurice, his friend’s dachshund was the first painting by Warhol to enter the Scottish Gallery of Modern Art’s collection.  

Here’s yet another dachshund lover. Hockney’s two dachshunds, Stanley and Boodgie, are immortalized in a series of portraits he did during a three-month period when he painted nothing but them. His brown short-legged friends are caught in every situation imaginable – snuggling on their bed, playing or eating together. The portraits became part of Dog Days in 1995, a huge book full of pet portraits, a perfect tribute to Hockney’s loyal friends.  

Steinlein’s cats were often a symbol of the spite of the anti-bourgeoisie oriented society he was a part of in the Parisian most bohemian neighbourhood. Though he didn’t own any of the cats he painted, he was fascinated by the feline creatures and made innumerous drawings and paintings of them. They also often figured in his popular commercial illustrations, the most famous of which must be his lithographic poster from 1896 for the Tournée du Chat Noir de Rodolphe Salis. 

What is your favourite picture of your pet? How does it show their character?  

Wouldn’t you like to see it on your wall greeting you every time you pass by with their tender and playful eyes? LivelyPaint can turn your favourite photos into lasting artwork to adorn your home with and preserve your most cherished memories forever.  

Simply upload your photos on the LivelyPaint website and your hand-painted oil painting will be delivered to your doorstep in less than 3 weeks. 

In recent years there has been an explosion of online tools which can be used to fix details or remove unwanted objects or people from your digital photos.

We went out and tested a bunch of them for you and here we bring you our top five. If we missed out on any, don’t hesitate to leave a message in the comments column.

1. Inpaint

Inpaint can be used as a free online tool directly from your browser. There is also Inpaint App which is available for purchase. We tried it with a couple of photos.

The result was quite good when the objects removed were far in the background. The objects were erased neatly, and the space was filled up with the surrounding pixels, even though the texture of the background varied in different parts.

If you try to replace a larger section of the image, the result is not as good when you use the simplest Erase function. To get considerably better results, we suggest using their step-by-step tutorials. They will show you how to make best use of this tool’s most popular features.

Once you’re happy with your work, you can download the fixed photo in low resolution free of charge. For a high-resolution version, you will need to buy credits.

On this website you can discover other similar tools, which you can use to change the background in your photos, resize them, stitch them together and so on.

• Pros – Fairly good results, detailed tutorials, and other useful photo editing options
• Cons – Free version is limited
• Website – www.theinpaint.com

2. Cutout.pro

This online tool works well for simple tasks like removing a stray finger on the lens, or some random person in the photos from ‘the night before’, or hiding the leash from Little Fido’s collar.

The major setback with this tool is the fact that you cannot control what the cut-out space will be filled with. When dealing with unwanted objects placed against backgrounds with varying colors, you might end up with some quite unrealistic results.

To download a photo, you need to register with a Facebook or Google account.

Cutout.pro has other photo editing options as well, and can be used to erase scratches, tears and spots from old photos, to remove or blur backgrounds, or for color correction.

• Pros: Easy to use and has other photo editing options (like photo colorizer for black and white photos)
• Cons: Cannot control the ‘fill material”
• Website: www.cutout.pro

3. Fotor

Fotor doesn’t have a “remove” function but works with a “Clone” effect instead. With this option you choose the part of the image that you want to use to paint over the unwanted section.

With a bit of trial and error, we were able to get good results for objects placed in the background and for photos without too much detail. However, results were not so good on highly detailed photos because the clone brush is not very precise.

To download the finished photo, you need to log in with a Google, Facebook or Apple account.

This tools also has other features like blemish fix, teeth whitening, background blur, etc….

• Pros: Lets you choose the clone area or ‘fill material’
• Cons: Does not work well on busy photos
• Website: www.fotor.com

4. Luminar

Luminar is not an online tool but a desktop application. We thought it would be interesting to see how it works for removing unwanted object from photos. A free 7-day trial version is available. After which you will need to purchase a pro version.

This tool looks great, and we had high expectations, yet the initial results were a bit disappointing. This was probably more due to my limited skills rather than the tool itself. Luminar does have a bit of a learning curve. Eventually with a delicate combination of the Erase and Clone options, I was able to remove the unwanted shadow (and even a funny hair clip!) from my sunny holiday cliff beach-view photo.

With Luminar you can do lots of other cool stuff like changing the background of your photos, and find many other more professional features for creative digital photo editing. It can also be added as plug-in to programs like Adobe Photoshop, Lightroom, and Apple Aperture.

Skylum, the developers of Luminar, offers a photo academy with tips, tutorials and podcasts, and a marketplace of templates for photography professionals.

• Pros: A multitude of creative photo editing options; Skylum Photo Academy and useful resources
• Cons: No online version; Requires training to obtain good results
• Website: www.skylum.com/luminar-ai-b

5. Cleanup.pictures – LIvelyPaint Favourite

With its minimalistic interface, we were not expecting too much from this tool. After using Cleanup.pictures it quickly became our favourite. It is straightforward to use and does what it says on the box with impressive results!

Cleanup Pictures only works with the Remove option, and lets you choose the width of the brush. I used it to remove some high-tension wires from my beach landscape photos. It also worked well on foreground objects, see how I was able to remove tattoos.

Downloading the final photo in low-res was simple and does not require registration or sign-in.

• Pros: Simple to use; great results; no sign-in
• Cons: No other photo editing options: HD file download require an email
• Website: www.cleanup.pictures

BONUS: Just cause they’re so cute, here’s a couple more successfully saved pet portraits 😊

Turn your favourite memories into hand-painted oil paintings with LivelyPaint

With LivelyPaint you can turn your favourite photos into a unique piece of artwork. Simply upload your photos on the LivelyPaint website and your hand-painted oil painting will be delivered to your doorstep in less than 3 weeks.

Turn your photos into hand-painted oil paintings

The importance of portraiture as an art form can be seen throughout history, primarily from the fact that its origins date as far as ancient Egypt, about 5,000 years back. In the classical era the dominant form of portraiture was sculpture, but further from the Middle Ages and through Renaissance and the modern age, painted portrait prevailed as a means to immortalize both important figures and scenes of everyday life. Within European art history, portrait painting has a clearly important place, with entire museums dedicated to them. Up to the 19th century art supplies were scarce and expensive, and so only the wealthy would commission artists to do portraits of themselves and their families. With the Industrial revolution came mass production of art supplies, which meant that middle-class people could now afford to commission portraits as well.With the Social Realism movement, middle and working classes also became the focus of portraitists of the time.

Up until the 19th century, portraits were the only way to immortalize someone’s image. Portraits were never a mere visual representation of someone’s appearance. Their goal has always been to reveal more about the subject, be it about their social status, professional role, or their inner self. The most intriguing portraits are those that hide deeper meanings in less obvious details, like included objects, or the subject’s expression or pose, or the artist’s use of colour. Then again, some of the most famous portraits are those that leave some space for the viewer’s own interpretation of the meaning they carry.

Details that first strike a viewer’s eyes are usually the subject’s face expression or pose, their environment and their clothing (or lack of).

The location where the portrait is depicted can tell us about the social status of the subject, the era they lived in, or their profession.

Similarly to setting, how a person is dressed can reveal their profession or rank if they are in a uniform, the social group they belong to, or an event they’re a part of. Modest or worn-out clothes may mean that the artist wants us to understand we are looking at an ordinary unpretentious everyday man or woman, while a lady in a fancy evening gown will evoke a glamorous event. Apparel can also highlight a subject’s natural beauty, like in the example of the famous Portrait of Madame X below.

Regardless of all the surroundings, if a subject’s face in a portrait is visible, we as viewer will notice it and try to read into it. It will tell us their mood and emotional state, their age, even their character. Perhaps the most popular portrait of all times, the Mona Lisa, is so intriguing because her confident subtle smile leaves complete freedom to a viewer’s imaginative mind to interpret it according to their own imagination or mood.

Can you read confidence from a military official standing tall with their chin high ? How about a ballerina in the pirouette, doesn’t it instantly make you hear the soft sounds of the music she’s dancing to? Even in some of the famous animal portraits, their posture is the language that tells us of their elegance, freedom or distress. (-> link will lead to the article about the famous pet portraits)

If there are other objects in a portrait besides the main characters(s), you can be sure they are there for a reason. A powerful revered leader will be depicted in a fancy ornate throne and not a plain wooden chair.

Colours can be a powerful tool to convey emotions, both of the subject or of the artist. Unconventional and unrealistic colours and unusual brush strokes and painting techniques all serve to deliver a certain meaning or align the artwork with a particular art movement. (-> link to the article about the effect of colours on mood)

Similarly to how portraits tell us stories about their subjects, self-portraits can reveal a lot about the inner life of the artists who created them. Some of the most known self-portraits are those made by Frida Kahlo, Van Gogh and Pablo Picasso where they used different approaches to explore aspects of their inner life and psychology. (-> link to the article about famous self-portraits)

Even though we refer here to portrait painting, same interpretation can apply to portrait photography. All portraits tell us a story, firstly about the subject and then about the artist. Painted portraits add a touch of glamour to the scene, and significance to the portrayed person, as they remind us of the effort taken to turn the memory of them into a lasting piece of art. So, when you take your next portrait or have yours taken, think about the stories you want to the convey.

With LivelyPaint you can turn your portrait photos into a unique piece of artwork. Simply upload your photos on the LivelyPaint website and your hand-painted oil painting will be delivered to your doorstep in less than 3 weeks.

Turn your photos into hand-painted oil paintings