but you know what as a as a little kid i used to go up to their house and jim would be with his brother joe sitting there painting and i think i was the noisy little cousin that came up and asked a million questions of to jim and i'm sure jim remembers that and i would sit there and watch him paint and watch joe paint and draw and ended up doing that kind of stuff on my own of course not the caliber and the talents of jim and joe are but  just by watching them i picked up technique and style and a little bit of the basics on how to how to draw and how to paint and although i've been painted for years for a number of years i did that for a number of years and that why are you doing this so but anyway so it's it's it's a it's amazing to me how you can just watch and learn from someone that was born with this tell i think jim was born with a pencil in his hand and a working on it folks the shorter time in if one or just worked on it would have been double the time so we had to do a lot of research for that the fact that anything i paint i like to know everything i can about it  i remember you did mock up boards small regions of it before you did the big painting right worked out drawings and then small paintings and then would have to send those over to saudi arabia for approval and then  old was over thirty years ago and then i then you started the ad you did the landscapes and then i saw you going in the portrait painting and and so people were commissioning you for portraits all right i'm done a lot of portraits  posed for me from from life but a lot of times i have to take photos you know is there a difference in in your perception of the person live when you do a portrait from a live or as opposed  do you gain some of the personality when it's when it's a live you know exactly that's a good question because in that you can there's a give and take and i could get to know the person and much better than enough i'm just handed a photograph for my own you know fact i painted a woman's portrait who i mentor painted her and then she and her husband became good friends and you know over the years i thought  paint her entirely differently because i don't think so because it's you get this impression and you paint from feeling that's how you pay any good artist paints or any good composer paints composers write them filling and so it's looking at a still photograph and then actually understanding the person you get a different interpretation exactly and i don't think most people would realize that that there's a difference so to this day you're you're you're  painting portraits too i'm doing right now so we have a lot of dog porches here and we're going to talk about those but do you enjoy the portraits more or the still life's more or the landscapes more so i'd like to paint everything i'm always moving from one subject to another in fact one enhances the other by enhancing the other well if i'm painting outdoors and then i'm getting a feel for the atmosphere and then if i go indoors and paint the get that same atmosphere in the painting you know and then with the still life painting form you know spears you know apples and whatever and yes it was cold and we had some snow flurries there but jim had his camera with him and he was constantly stopping and snapping pictures and we were going around that would be a good painting that would be the way the light was coming through and achieve the trees the fall rays were eliminated and so forth so you're never very different way to approach a portrait of a still life or a landscape yes and no i'm always looking for for light in every subject you know and composition that's all that's always going to be the same composition is placement you know so there are a lot of similarities but  like you are so you know early you have to feel it when you're surrounded by the landscape or have somebody sitting right here and working with them so and so you look at shape position and then like those are like the key components of  making opponent a painting right so if you're out that's a do on a still life or a portrait in the same indoor porsche let's talk about porches indoor porch as opposed to outdoor part portraits so in an indoor por can you can position the lighting the way you want it and sit there and do a lot of portrait then what happens when you're outside and the lights change as clouds come or or or the sun goes in and out or whatever that's another good question because it's so different has a different feel because of that the light and the atmosphere so shadows are cooler maybe bluer more violent you know and indoors there warmer a lot mur and you know the lights changing all the time so so we have to settle on one idea and just stay with it and that's what you hit in your head yeah keep it in your head and you have i had the initial you and then it that's that's important to me and then you don't know this but i was visiting with your brother vic yesterday his office and he's selling me a tour of the complex factory and and there's there's gyms paintings  we're surrounded by portraits of dogs and people today and i don't think years ago it used to be this way so much but people today and i'm guilty of this i think of my dogs my kids as part of the family and and you know a picture is one thing but again it's as flat non dimensional as surface anybody can take a picture of us i'm not a picture taker but you know there's a talent i think of that as well right but but picture taking is one thing having a portrait that's done in oil or done in watercolor or i've seen some of your approach achieve done in pencil right and there's a whole new dimension when you have that so what we have some of the paintings that you've done for a long time and but i want to start off with jim with with you talking about the painting that was done for a local movie that there was filmed there in just about to be artwork so they rented the called me and wanted to rent this painting and i think this is of print of the original painting that's a golden retriever and it's going to be in a movie called coopers of the coopers and it'll be out it's a christmas movie will be out this year and that was from the pittsburgh area was filmed all over pittsburgh and at the gallery right near here and diane keaton and john goodman are in it that's an interesting combination you know so i'm looking forward to seeing it work what they did with the painting in the movie because there's a possibility that if it gets cut out did a picture what took the picture of the dog is it because the lights important and i wanted the dog to have a good light and shadow and was the one that they wanted done now i already painted see this one the person who commissioned the original wanted prints so we made some prints for him to give to his children yeah yeah well jim we're going to take a little break here from an ad we'll be back know i'd be doing this you know throughout my life that it's not like i don't do them every day but i had you know well you've done it for a long time and i know one time we donated one of you paintings to genesis awards held every year in california it's a red carpet event and it was up for auction and got a great response i think they were with a greyhound greyhound yeah and that was that was a number of years ago you know what's interesting is when i used to do my little bit of painting i would go to the store and buy these tubes of pain and they were just all pre manufactured made and what jim does and he's been doing this for as long as i can remember make his own paints from scratch lost art all by itself right it's not like the craft the craft is important so we but you know better quality and that's what it what happens you end up having a better quality a truer painting right and more timeless work absolutely so jim tell us that what's behind the story behind this painting ok that there's somebody who's peters township arrested and who this was his father's d and he wanted me to do the painting of the surprise because the dog had died and they gave me this photograph to work from when i did appear in the painting and  lot of times i have to pose the dog i don't really pose them i get try to get one good picture out of a hundred so you spend time following the dog in this movements and whatever it's doing throughout a period of time and snap pictures of that canvas right here so it's so it's hard to tell and i actually built up some texture on that looks even more like an original because it gives it that three d a look right so this washed she's back she's healthy and happy when you mention that jan that's a great show to go back in the archives and look at because that was such a traumatic experience for you and for her she was gone for what like a wee one it's a print of an old painting i did my aunt and that little dog and that was one of the early ones that i painted but it seem you're talking about light before so the light  to meet a lot of greyhound people and these greyhound people had a couple of other dogs and they wanted me to put them all together so that was it was a job because for them or runnin around and they had to stop each one and would try to hold four can be managed to get enough to work with and i think it came out pretty well you know full well that what i see is interesting here is you blurred the background for watching healthy pets healthy owners member healthy dog is a happy dog and so will there be we'll see you next time on healthy pets healthy