These are pictures of watercolor paintings I have done to be given as gifts for my grown children and granddaughter. The animals are my daughter, step-son and granddaugher's pets. I was able to photograph them on my last trip to California for the holidays, in December. I am giving my two sons the seascapes since I do not have photos of their pets.

I will be giving the paintings to them next Christmas (2003). I have not told them about the paintings as I plan to surprise them with their gift. (so, if you know them, please don't mention the paintings to them if you should see or talk to them).

I accept commissions for pet paintings.   I prefer to photograph the pet myself, if possible.   But, if that is not possible, I need to have a fairly large photo, at least 5 x 7 inches and preferably 8 x 10 inches.  The price of a watercolor painting of a single pet on the same size paper as the pets pictured here (18 x 14 inches) is $850.00.   Each additional pet added to the same painting is $350.00.

You may contact me at my email address, bettyg@hawaii.rr.com or telephone me (on the big island of Hawaii) at (808) 328-0595.

If you would like to see more of my paintings, to go to my regular personal web page, click here. I will have my own domain page (www.bettygerstner.com) completed and on the internet within about a week (from June 30, 2003).

For each of the pictures below, you may click on the thumbnail picture or the caption to view a larger version.

Pet Paintings:

Moby and Toby

Moby and Toby. Moby is my granddaughter, Stacy's cat and Toby is her Chihuahua. They currently live with her in Costa Mesa, California. Click on the thumbnail picture for a larger version.

Felicity

Felicity. Felicity is my daugher, Gina's cat. One day last December, during my stay with Gina, we were moving furniture around in the two upstairs bedrooms so that Stacy could steam clean the carpet. Felicity fled to the top of a bookcase in Gina's bedroom to get out of the way. I photographed her in this "laid-back" position. For the painting, I put her in a less hectic scene.

Both of these paintings are from photos I took of the beach by the Natural Energy Lab in the Kona District of the Big Island of Hawaii, located out near the Kona Airport. The beach is mostly big slabs of lava rock and the waves roll in creating big wave spray against the rocks.

I was so involved in waiting for each wave to come in that I did not realize that I was out in the sun on the rocks for almost an hour. Needless to say, I got a little sunburned. But the photos I got were worth it. I plan to do some more paintings of both this area and from some photos that I took of the beach at Lapahoehoe, which is located on the north east coast of the Big Island. Laupahoehoe (pronounced "Lapa-hoy-hoy") is composed of mostly large, high, jagged lava rocks and this promotes a lot of high sea spray too.