Personal Portraits

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Unique Cards and Portraits.

Give a personal gift with a unique portrait of a loved one or order individual hand made Christmas cards to send to your friends and family. Browse through my PORTFOLIO to give you some inspiration.

I have just got back from hiking the Pacific Crest Trail from Mexico to Canada and it was certainly an intense and worthwhile adventure!  To find out more check out our blog. Back in civilization and reachable at the touch of a button I am available to take commissions.

I am offering 10% off for the first 3 I receive!

My name is Dan Pizzo. I am a Britalian. Mother from England and father from Sicily. I have spent half of my life in Italy and half in England (with a 2 year stint in Washington DC in the US). For as long as I can remember I have had a passion for beauty and art. Throughout school this was my forte and up until the age of 18 I was certain that I would pursue a career in art. That was until it came to my attention that I had to stay at home an extra year to do a foundation year in art at a local college before I could attain a place at university. Although my relationship with family was healthy (albeit slightly tumultuous) I was ready to try my hand at independence. And so I embarked on a Bachelors Degree in Medical Biochemistry at The University of Birmingham, UK, vowing that art would remain a serious hobby. Unfortunately the next three years of my life saw little commitment to this promise.

The following years after my degree I worked for a branch of the government at HSE and then in 2004 I retreated to live in a community in the Tuscan hills of Italy for 6 months. My pursuit for beauty was rekindled here and I secured a job at Georgetown University in Washington DC working to inspire people in their search for beauty in the wilderness. I worked as the Assistant Director of Outdoor Education at Georgetown for the next two years. I found teaching and connecting with others in the mountains awakened the artist inside.  As the great John Muir said:

While living in Italy and during the application process for my role as the Assistant Director of Outdoor ed, which included a hike through the mountains of La Verna, I met my wife, Anna. We married in Virginia in April 2006.

In 2007 as Anna and I came closer to discovering our vocational calling we moved to England to try to discover how we could best encourage and be encouraged by others in the outdoors. I worked as a freelance artist for 3 months in Buckinghamshire and then we both embarked on a 10 month long intensive lecture & volunteering course in York, northern England. Here I did a variety of hands on work involving: mentoring troubled teens; co-ordinating a youth café and nightclub for local teens in York; pioneering outreach to homeless communities; painting, decorating and gardening in local homes with Besom charity; attending lectures and completing written assignments. The course finished with a 7 week trip to China (where we visited people who were doing many of the same things we had done in York).

At the end of March ‘09 we embarked on our greatest adventure yet; a through hike of the Pacific Crest Trail which runs through the of desert, mountains, forests and glaciers from the border of Mexico along the West coast of the States and into Canada.  How can we summarize the 5 months we’d been on the PCT? It was one of the most marvellous, miserable, exhilarating, exhausting, beautiful, boring, difficult, delightful, stressful, serene, challenging, cheery, bi-polar adventures of our lives.

So what now?  Well as you can imagine it is overwhelming to be back with a relatively blank slate in front of us.  One thing we would like to do is to hit the trail again in June or July to attempt a through hike of the Continental Divide Trail.  This time we will hike South bound from Canada to Mexico from the snowy Rockies  to the hot desert of New Mexico.  Until then we hope to earn some money and live close to friends and family in the DC area.

To read more about our adventures check out our blog.

Custom Individual Drawings

Here you can find a rough pricing guide! Please note that all prices are estimates. Accurate pricing will be discussed according to composition, size and your individual needs. If you send me a copy of a photograph via email or post with the specification (or price range) that you desire I will endevour to come up with a composition that you are happy with and a quote for the portrait. The table below is only meant as a rough guide to give you an idea of what you might expect. It is by no means restrictive to what I can draw for you; if you would like a portrait including five subjects, in a composition where some appear in the foreground, some in the background, some with full figures, others in motion with a background of a house and pets included – we can work something out! I am very happy to do drawings of pets, houses and landscapes too!

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Christmas/Special Occasion/Greeting Cards

Cards will be charged according to an individual portrait price (if this forms the front cover of your card) + approx. £0.50p-£2/$1-$3 per finished hand crafted card. The portrait piece will probably be done on an A4/A3 size and you will get to keep the original piece.  Like the portraits we will come up with a price that you are happy with before I begin crafting the cards!