Stapleton Studios: Former East mom creates a pet portrait business from what started as a quarantine hobby

“OMG Elizabeth she’s beautiful! Looks just like her! I love everything about it. I will never forget her pretty face.”

With weepy eyes and a mournful sigh, former East mom and professional animal portraiture artist Elisabeth Fries smiled down at her phone while reading a message of gratitude from her friend, Marybeth Singer. Fries had just delivered the portrait of Singer’s chocolate lab, Zoey, who’d “crossed the rainbow bridge” earlier that week.

Fries has commissioned 81 portraits of beloved pets since she started her business — Stapleton Studios — in March 2021, but this was one of the most emotionally demanding projects. Most days are filled with joyful pastel compositions of animals ranging from dogs and horses to ferrets. However, even knee-deep in the most challenging projects, Fries continues to be fulfilled by her work knowing the happiness, and occasionally closure, it will bring to the customer. 

“The fact that she was entrusting her [pet’s] memory to me was just so sentimental,” Fries said. “I poured every bit of love I had into that one.”

Since founding her business, Fries paints three to five days a week and completes between five and ten portraits a month — a number that doubles around holidays such as Christmas and Mother’s Day.

“As a parent, I wonder if it’s what you’re encouraged to do as a child [that] you become good at,” Fries said. “If someone along the lines had said, ‘Hey, you’re kind of good at this,’ I would’ve discovered this talent much earlier.”

Aside from dabbling in photography and running the social media for The Little Flower Shop, Fries had no prior artistic experience. Amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, Fries took the time to learn to sketch between family walks and movie binging. Evolving into watercolor paintings and then colored pencil, and finally to her current pastel pet portraits. She and her family began sharing her work on social media and the DMs came flooding in requesting personalized portraits.

Utilizing her maiden name, Stapleton, she officially established her business by creating the Instagram account, @stapletonstudios, and website, stapletonstudios.org last spring — charging $350 for 9.5×12 inch portraits and $500 for 12×15.5 inch portraits. 

“It was just completely out of the blue,” Fries said. “Of course [my family] was proud, but everyone was just dumbfounded because it was never something I’d shown an aptitude for.”

With the TV mumbling in the background and clad in her “uniform of dog fur and pastel,” she begins each project by eyeballing a rough outline of the animal from the photo onto cellulose paper in black and white pastel pencil. 

“I work in the living room on what was once a nice coffee table,” Fries said. “It is now beaten up so badly that it has absolutely no purpose but to spill pastel chalk all over.”

But the outline is just the first step. Once it’s complete she begins on the eyes, dedicating the majority of the time to them since they “anchor” the face and depict the animal’s personality. 

“If you can get the eyes looking the way the specific dog’s eyes do, then the rest kind of falls into place,” Fries said. “Their personality and their little soul and their little goodness just emanates from those beautiful eyes.”

Working from left to right across the face, she lays down the base by applying a slightly creamy pan pastel with a sponge and then goes in with pastel pencils to add the fine details of the fur. She uses more pan pastel for dogs with fluffy, “cotton candy” fur and more pencil for those with coarse, wiry coats.

“The pastels add a specific density and realism to the portraits which I could never manage to figure out with watercolor,” Fries said. “They always ended up looking whimsical, which was fun, but didn’t reflect much personality.” 

Her favorite part comes when the hard work is done — it’s time to wrap the piece. Once the painting is complete, Fries packages the artwork in a luxury presentation box that won’t fold or collapse in on the work. She wraps the box with tissue paper, includes how-to-treat instructions and business cards, puts everything in a tissue-lined sack, ties it with grosgrain ribbon and hand delivers it to the customer. 

“I always pray that customers will remember to send me a photo of their or the pet’s reaction to the piece because honestly I’d rather have one of those than be paid,” Fries said.

Fries believes that her business has spread by word of mouth for the most part, but she has reached her out of state — and once international — clientele through social media. She’s curated a “gallery of furry friends,” updating her personal and business Instagram accounts with all of her favorite projects and often posts half-and-half pictures comparing her art and reference photo to emphasize the hyper-realistic style. 

Busy with commissions and all of the business she’d been accruing, it took Fries 11 months of business to get around to painting her own dogs, Janie and Roo, this past month.

“It’s like a mom that has too many kids and the youngest doesn’t have a scrapbook,” Fries said. 

Regardless of how busy she is with commissions, knowing what the portrait will mean to her customer keeps her motivated and staves off burnout. The only time she’s felt bored with her art this year was practicing with a stock image of a bunny. Knowing it wouldn’t carry any meaning to someone made it impossible to finish the piece since she lacked her usual drive. 

“It motivates me to know how excited [the customer] will be when they get their portrait and waiting for a text saying that they got it and how thrilled they are,” Fries said. “That’s the best part.”