Followers of my blog, The Accidental Artist, will remember the Art for Shelter Animals Project, which I started years ago with my friend Shiela Tajima. ASAP has languished for well more than a year now, as I got too busy with Patch and with life to give it the attention it deserves.

It’s time to start it up again, and I’d like to invite any and all of you who make art to consider joining me in relaunching the project.

Here’s how it works. You make a portrait of an animal in your local shelter or with a local rescue group, you send me a jpg of the portrait, and then you give it to the shelter or rescue group. They can do whatever they want with it. Anything. Once you give it, the piece is theirs. The more creative the shelter, the more uses they will find.

And more than anything, the shelter will be grateful. They’ll be thrilled to have the painting and happy for the attention.

It was making paintings for ASAP that liberated me in terms of using colors, and using the palette knife, really. The shelters are so happy to have the pieces that there is No Pressure At All. Making these portraits showed me that dogs can be painted in shades of green and purple and still be recognized.

Please join me! Make a portrait of an animal in your local shelter, or with your local rescue group, and donate it. Send me a jpg before you give the piece away, though! You can go to the shelter and take photos, or do what I do and use Petfinder.com.

This is a great way to help your community, to help some dogs and cats and rabbits and whatever else is in your shelter, and to do it without involving money. If you teach art classes, it’s a great topic for an art class, too!

Thank you for considering it!

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I leave in about 10 days for my Arizona journey, To Tubac and Back. This is going to be such a fun trip, for all sorts of reasons, not the least of which is I get to visit my dad and his wife in their beautiful home in Tubac, an hour or so south of Tucson.

I’m in a show in Tucson, and have found out that an old friend of mine lives there, so that’s an extra added bonus!

Also, I am going to drive out through Mississippi and Alabama, places I’ve never been, and am so excited to see – and paint.