The Rudy Project began when I painted a digital portrait of my own dog, Rudy. I am a self-professed crazy dog mom and when I finally got five minutes of spare time at the end of the winter semester in 2020, I decided to paint my special boy and post the portrait on social media. This is where the requests came flooding in from family and friends to have their loved ones painted as well.

After a month, I had painted Rudy and was over 50 orders in, I decided to apply to Conestoga College’s Gig Lab which is a business incubator for Freelancers where mentors and experts in the field helped me develop my side hustle into a functioning business where I expanded my product line, adjusted my pricing, built a website, and streamlined all business processes.

As of May 2021 (one year of business), I had painted over 500 portraits for clients all over Canada. These have ranged from pets to people to large group photos to custom orders of grandpa’s classic cars. The Rudy Project turned into a passion project and a creative outlet for digital illustrations using apps like Adobe Photoshop for iPad, Adobe Fresco and Procreate.

As time went on and the eCommerce market changed as we came out of the heat of the pandemic, other opportunities arose for myself that put The Rudy Project on the back burner. During this time I worked to streamline as many business processes as possible and simplify the illustration process, including adding new products that took far less time to complete. Ultimately we wrapped up shop for good in December of 2022 (but if you really want one, you can still send me a message!).