About

Hello, my name’s Chloe of Happy Pawtraits, I’m a pet portrait artist, illustrator, day dreamer and animal lover in my twenties. Art is my life, a day just isn’t complete unless I’m covered in paints and have drawn a happy dog, cat or any happy animal. My mission; to spread happiness through my art, one drawing at a time. That is everything to me. It can be hard at first to find your own style and it was when I took the scary step of offering commissions that I really found my style.

My art reflects my personality, bright, colourful, fun loving and bursting with happiness! I mostly work in watercolour in rather an expressive way, I don’t really think as I’m drawing I just feel (and hope it goes right) In each of my drawings I infuse my love of nature and life and I always connect with the subject. Sometimes I’m staggered when a pet owner sees their finished drawing and says ‘how did you know he always sat by the buttercups’, or ‘he looked so placid in the drawing how on earth did you capture his mischievous character’ I love it when that happens. I’ve been drawing ever since I was able to hold a pencil, but it was only a few years that art became my career too. To be able to wake up and think ‘hmm what do I have to do today…oh yay I get to draw, well it speaks for itself.

My dream is to become a best selling children’s book illustrator and writer and just to get to do this forever. I am an artivist and I love to do projects that help heal the world and it’s beautiful creatures., One year I raised money for a friend who needed medical treatment, everyone who donated five pounds got a pawtrait. We raised over a thousand pounds in a week and I felt like I’d drawn every single one of the 101 dalmatians when I’d finished. Last year I submitted a wildlife painting for ’Sketch for Survival’, the money raised from the auction went to help the fund. I painted my ‘Happy Planet” which was surrounded by all the endangered animals around the world. I’m going to be creating a lot of those this year. I also make a colouring book every year, it’s what I look forward to most, even as much as my birthday and that’s saying something.

I have an application period on my instagram and everyone who wants to be in the book comments. In four weeks I draw 32 pages filled with over 300 actual pets of instagram. Last year’s was The Paw Seasons and esch page represented something of the seasons, Chinese New Year, Bonfire Night, Surfs up. I have a live video book launch with cakes and the books and I literally can’t stop smiling after, my face feels frozen with joy. I laugh a lot and I love to pack all of the pages full of humour. There’s lots of little stories going on, people share their pets stories and I choose a few to include. I pack it with detail so it’s really interactive.

If you look in one, past the main action through the window of a house you can see a marriage proposal :) I have suffered with chronic illness since I was a small child and the illness has taken away a lot of things from me but at the same time through art I have gained so much. Most of all, my amazing Instagram family. They are absolutely amazing, the support and love they give me makes me feel like the luckiest person in the world.

If I could give one piece of advice to people wanting to draw, it’s quite simple. Just do it! Even if you think you can’t, you can! Believe in yourself, don’t judge yourself, just throw down paints of colours, paint what you feel and don’t care about the result. The only voice in your head you should listen to is the one that says ‘you can do it!” I believe one of the most important things in life is to find something that makes you happy, and once you’ve found it, never let it go. There's a lot of sadness in the world, I want to offer a light to bring happiness through my art.