Doggy love

 A couple of weeks ago, on January 30th, I had this notion that it was time to paint some dogs. The feeling hits me out of the blue every year or so. I immediately put together a new collage of recent dog portraits and started promoting a contest. Someone was going to win a dog portrait worth four hundred dollars. To enter, all they had to do was submit a cute dog pic and share it as a comment.

If you follow my Facebook page, you'll have some sense as to what happened next. The dog pics started pouring in from far and wide. By the time I narrowed down the submissions, over 500 pics had been submitted. The post had reached over 17,500 people and had been shared 231 times.

A couple of days later, I created a collage of 49 dog pics that stood out to me to let everyone know that I would soon narrow down my choices to a manageable nine and that I would seek their votes to help me decide which dog to paint. That post reached an additional 5,000 and elicited over 100 comments.

A pic with the 9 finalists was shared on February 4th and the voting started instantaneously. By the time the dust settled, over 950 votes had been cast, the post had been shared 79 times (by people trying to rally support for their favourite dog) and had been seen by 13,000 people. 

It took me several hours to count every single vote. By the time I reached the 500 vote mark, one dog had a sizeable lead. However, in the second half of counting, another dog grabbed the momentum and soared to victory. Cash, or Cashman, as he was known to his friends and family, was the winner. 

The underlying purpose of the contest was to remind my followers that I love painting dogs and accept commissions throughout the year to do so. Now, I could have shared a post to that effect, which might have been seen by a couple dozen people.  Instead, I decided to invest my time and effort and give away a dog portrait to build awareness and excitement. I'm glad I chose the latter strategy. I've been busy painting dogs ever since.

I spent yesterday working on the portrait of Cash. I am mostly done, but wanted to look at it with fresh eyes this morning before sharing it with Krystal in Clairmont, Alberta and eventually with all of you.

Want to get in the growing queue to have your pup painted? The best thing to do is to send me an email with a few pics. I'll get back to you with some size and price options. Connect with me at russell@birdsongstudios.ca. Commissions start at $400 and go up from there depending on the number of dogs and the size of the canvas.