Foster Dogs And Other Discarded Things Come Together For Whimsical And Surreal Pet Portrait Series

“One man’s garbage is another man person’s good ungarbage” -Cory Trevor

The idea for ‘Paper Hats” was a simple one. Find a bunch of post-consumer paper materials (newspaper, paper plates, and cardboard mostly) and use those items to make fun costumes for adoptable rescue and foster dogs.

We partnered with one of my favorite local rescues, Bella’s Bully Buddies, a 501c3 all volunteer operated pitbull rescue and foster organization, for the project.

Half of all art sales from Paper Hats are going directly to Bella’s. We have already raised several hundred dollars for the rescue, but with there being no shortage of dogs needing help (and homes) in Baltimore, we certainly don’t want to stop there.

You may notice in a few of these photos that some of the dogs look a tad distorted. There’s a simple reason for that. For this set, I carefully mirrored the expressions of the dogs.

Why? Most dogs, like people, emote mostly from the right side of their face. So by mirroring their face, it tends to amplify whatever expression was already present. And by doing so, especially when the dog isn’t looking directly head-on, we’re also able to play a bit with their body shape, which I think really brought a few of the characters to life. This effect is most notable in the King, Queen and Shaman portraits.

Oh – and in case you were all wondering which one of the dogs is Bella – she’s the Queen, of course.

More info: puptrait.com