Art with a purpose: Fort Worth area students inspire pet adoptions with dog paintings.

Two things most kids love are dogs and painting.

Fourth-grade students at Justin Elementary School combined the two with their Painting for Pets project. As part of their art lessons, they painted portraits of real dogs available for adoption from Apollo Support & Rescue in Justin. The portraits are used to encourage potential owners to bring home new pets.

“I have wanted to do a service learning project partnering with our local shelter for a while now. When my husband and I found a pup that had been dumped off of I-35 last spring, we took him to Apollo to be cared for until a suitable home was found,” said Justin Elementary art teacher Megan White.

“We stayed and talked with the volunteers for a while, and I was able to share my idea. They loved it, and we put the project into action this fall.

“I love connecting our art lessons with purpose out in the community and showing our students that their art can have an impact.”

White has adopted two pets of her own. She said the project is also designed to show students how wonderful such a connection can be, helping them understand the difference they can make.

Many of the students have pets of their own, and helping Apollo is nothing new for the school. They do a toy drive for the shelter each year, White said.

And the students overwhelmingly enjoyed the project.

“I was proud of how realistic the portraits looked,” Kylee Flanagan said.

Added Carli Neely: “I hope that some of the dogs we created portraits of find a family outside of the shelter.”

Students began by outlining the dogs’ photos with a wax transfer technique to gather all the finer details and lines of the animals’ faces. Once the outlines were complete, students mixed paints together to create colors closely matching fur seen in the original photos.

Several area businesses hung students’ paintings in their establishments. Through the artwork, families can use a code that links directly to Apollo’s list of available pets.

“I notify students when I have been updated by Apollo about a pup we have painted finding a home,” White said. “Although our young artists cannot take all of the credit for the adoption of said pets, they do feel so much pride and satisfaction when the pet they have painted has been adopted.”

White said since the artwork has been placed more than 30 dogs have been adopted.

“Our students, families and community have had such a great response to this project, we would love to make this project a tradition within our school,” she said. “ ... It made me so proud as a teacher to hear the sincere hearts of my students relating to the dogs and wanting to help them.”