Beloved reptiles deserve pet portraits too!

 

Soulful eyes stare out at the viewer. The silky fur is so realistic that one can imagine how it feels to the touch. A good pet portrait brings out the personality of the animal, along with accurately depicting the fur patterns, muscle tone and facial details. Local artist Sarah Kwiatkowski has pretty much mastered these techniques in her cat and dog portraits; but when it comes to portraying reptiles, the challenges differ. Does a gecko show expression in his tiny eyes?

Kwiatkowski grew up with reptiles as pets.

“My older brother had a gecko,” she says. “At age 4, I helped feed and care for him. My parents encouraged our love for animals, and we always had cats and dogs. At age 13, I got my first leopard gecko.”

King Midas is now 14 years old, making him middle-aged for his species.

Having been interested in art as a child, Kwiatkowski recalls sketching her family pets at a very young age. In middle school and high school, she took on extra classes in art whenever it was possible. As she developed her skills, colored pencils and pastel sticks seemed to be the best application for reproducing the fine details of fur, feathers and scales onto paper.

At age 16, Kwiatkowski sold her first pet portrait to the mother of a friend.

“This was my first realization that I might possibly be able to be successful at an art career,” she says.

Enrolling in art school after graduation, she felt early on that the school was not a good fit for her.

“By then, I was already selling my art, and I had certain expectations,” she says. “But the professors put too much pressure on following rules. In one assignment, where we were told to use only three colors, I stepped out the box a bit and added a fourth.

The instructor was so angry. I just felt that art should not have such restrictions.”

Leaving after a semester, she began to pursue a less formal art education.

“I am mostly educating myself,” she says.

Camping out at the family kitchen table, Kwiatkowski works on her commissioned pet portraits whenever the space is available.
“I use a special light that has warm and cool features, which can be intensified in order to get the tonality of my colors correct. This way, I can work in daylight or during the evening,” she says.

Using 100% lightfast pencils on archival pastel mat, she refers to photographs to lay down the initial sketch.

“It is like a road map. I draw the eyes, nose, eyebrows (if the subject is a dog) with a pencil. Then I fill in the details with colored pencils or pastel sticks. I continue to use the photos as reference, following the patterns of the fur and muscles,” she says.

While working with reptiles, the process is quite different.

“First of all, I can use live models,” she says. “Reptiles stay very still for a long time.”

And while most people agree that a good pet portraitist can capture the soul of a dog or a cat in the eyes, the unique qualities of a reptile are often in the more physical details.

“I focus on the itty bitty details that make a reptile stand out, such as the smallest birthmark,” says Kwiatkowski. “With birds, it might be the manner in which the feathers lay down or a distinct color pattern.”

Often studying scientific illustrations, the artist recognizes that the smallest details can differentiate one animal from another.
Kwiatkowski continues to learn techniques by trial and error and online tutorials. She feels that she has mastered the burnishing process with her pastels. Burnishing is applying more pressure to bring out the shine and add more saturation to the colors in a more time-efficient manner.

“For me, this is a much faster process than slowly layering the colors onto the paper,” she says. “I just don’t have the patience to build the colors gradually, so I find that burnishing works for me. And it is a perfect way to define the scales on reptiles.”

And there will always be plenty of reptilian models for this artist. Kwiatkowski is also a gecko breeder. Having gained experience while working at pet shops, she eventually began her own business, Wicked Reptiles. Starting out with three male and nine female African fat tail geckos, she is now raising her first batch of seven babies. Along with breeding geckos and creating pet portraits, she would also love to someday become a scientific illustrator.

“There are over 1,000 illustrators in this country working for textbooks, museums and zoos today,” she says. “At a recent reptile expo, I sold my first art piece of a stag beetle. While I regularly sell my commissioned pet portraits, it has taken me 10 years to sell a fine-art piece. It was an amazing experience to have someone connect with my artwork.”

Patricia Bruno is a Methuen native, currently living in Haverhill. A writer and photographer, she is also the owner of The Winged Rabbit gift shop in downtown Haverhill.