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Lewistown woman finds niche doing... Pet portraits By DONNA HEALY Of The Gazette Staff Raven OKeefe owns two aging cats, but border collies pay her bills. Five years ago, the Lewistown artist started selling pet portraits.
 Gazette photo/KEN BLACKBIRD Artist Raven OKeefe, of Lewistown, got some sketching in at the recent Montana Stockdog Handlers Association Trials at the Charter Ranch north of Billings. She creates pen and ink portraits of stockdogs, mostly border collies.
"No two ever look alike, even litter mates or the sire and puppies. Even if they do look similar, their characters and personalities are so different," she said. Pet owners don't want portraits of just any dog. They want their dog, although owners aren't above asking her to "Grecian formula" the gray away from their pet's muzzle. She draws border collies full-time, although she also winds up with stray commissions for cats, other dog breeds or mutts, and the occasional mule, bird or pot-bellied pig. She'll draw portraits of anything but cows and people. Cows are too ugly, and people are too vain, she said as she watched a stockdog trial near Billings in June. OKeefe, 52, wore a tie-dyed scarf as a headband. Her T-shirt design was one she donated to Border Collie Rescue, an organization that finds homes for unwanted border collies. The T-shirt carries a portrait of "Boone," a stockdog she fell in love with during a trial in North Carolina. Little details - like the way Boone's canine teeth are worn down from catching Frisbees - show in the portrait.
"I didn't even know what border collies were. I thought they were like 'Lassie,' " she said. "Now I know." Border collies are counted among the workaholics of the dog world. Some would willingly herd sheep until they dropped from heat exhaustion. "I've seen little border collies herd bugs," she said. She admires the teamwork between the handlers and their dogs. The finesse they show in herding the unpredictable sheep is like a well-crafted computer game. "Their communication's honed to a fine, fine edge," she said. Although stockdogs respond to a complicated series of whistles and voice commands, the border collies can also work independently. To break a tie in competition, the dogs sometimes do a "silent gather," herding sheep without any instructions from their handler. "Those little dogs will just blow you away with what they can do," she said.
 Above, a border collie will herd almost anything - including ducks - as shown in this Raven OKeefe work. OKeefe came back from her first stockdog competition with a half-dozen portrait orders and a fascination for the sport. She scrapped her commercial art work to travel to stockdog competitions. At first, she drew free portraits of the winning dogs, a marketing strategy that introduced her to top breeders and handlers. Last June, she put 7,000 miles on her Nissan truck, traveling to stockdog trials in Tennessee, North Carolina and Pennsylvania. In August, she'll drive to a stockdog competition in Illinois. Two years ago she went to the national finals in Oregon and the international championship in Ireland. Her portrait commissions never justified the trip to Ireland, but it fueled her love of the sport. At the competitions, she sets up a booth, camps out in her car and renews acquaintances with people she's already met on the stockdog circuit. Sales of prints and notecards usually cover her traveling expenses. She charges $150 for a basic 8x10 pose and typically gathers orders for 20 to 40 commissioned portraits at each trial. She advertises in five border-collie magazines and has two Internet Websites, one focused on dogs, the other geared to cat portraits. She usually stops taking Christmas portrait orders in August. In the fall, she works fanatically to meet the Christmas rush, spending 12 to 15 hours a day drawing. She settles on her "slouch," a couch made by rolling one mattress up as the backrest on another double-bed mattress and box springs. The phone's within reach, and her cats keep her company. Last October, her career nearly derailed when she was hit by a school bus as she walked across an intersection in Lewistown. While her broken bones mended, a concussion caused some lingering problems with spatial relationships and hand-eye coordination. She used to be able to look at a photo and draw the proportions. "Now, about every fifth or sixth portrait, it loses its proportion and I have to tear it up and start again," she said. She starts by choosing a pose from the photographs. After roughing in a basic outline, she draws the eyes.
"That's where the individual dog's personality lives," she said. If the eyes aren't right, the portrait won't look like the dog, no matter how accurately the other details are rendered, she said. "They're the most challenging, the most difficult and the most rewarding part," she said. "When the eyes are right, it's like all the bells and whistles going off on a slot machine." She works outward from the eyes, adding areas of dark and light fur to shape the dog's face. Once the pen-and-ink work is done, she adds watercolors to bring warmth and liveliness to the sketch. OKeefe grew up in Mineral Point, Wis., a small, historic mining town in the southwestern part of the state. She always loved to draw, but she majored in psychology at the University of Wisconsin and did graduate work in Indian studies. "I never worked a day in either one of them. I never made a nickel in either one of them, but I'm not sorry I did it," she said. In 1970, she moved to Boulder, Colo., where her then husband had gotten a university teaching job. She was married twice, once for 13 years, once for 13 months. In 1985, she moved to Utah, which she describes as a great state for river rafting and backpacking. On a vacation to the Big Hole Valley in 1990, she fell in love with Montana. She systematically quartered the state during the two years she searched for the right place to live. In 1992, she saw Lewistown. "I drove into town, and it was so beautiful, it just overwhelmed me," she said. It took two more years for her to save up enough money for a down payment on a house. OKeefe started doing commercial artwork about 20 years ago. Before that, she'd fallen into a series of jobs, from waitressing to secretarial work, to running a low-income housing project and working for a sign-painting company. "It was just whatever came along just to pay the bills," she said. Painting the pet portraits, she said, is the first really satisfying work she's ever done. "When you can combine something you love with something that will pay the bills," she said. "It doesn't get any better than this."
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