Wimberley artist paints portraits in wool

Michelle Robinson is an artist who has been accepting commissions to create one-of-a-kind animal portraits since 2022. What makes her work unique is that she creates portraits using sheep wool in a process called needle felting. The results will make you do a double take for their astonishing realism.

She begins with a photograph of a cat or a dog — or any animal, for that matter — that she carefully studies. From the initial photograph, she creates a drawing using the software program, Procreate. Procreate is a digital painting program that uses tiny pixels to create images. Once she has drawn the portrait, she begins the process of creating a three-dimensional sculpture of the animal’s head using “roving,” a thick bundle of wool fleece.

Any portrait artist will tell you that getting the correct shape of the head is a fundamental part of the process. From the shape of the head and ears, to the main features of the face, she recreates the animal’s proportions. Part of her skill comes from her work as a pet groomer and sitter. To create the base portrait of the face on the 3-D sculpted form, she pushes different colors of wool fibers, a couple of strands at a time, into the roving material using felting needles.

A felting needle has tiny barbs on its tip that, when stabbed through a material, catch on the scales of the fiber and push them together. Through this process, the base portrait is laid down.

Since animals are covered in fur, choosing the correct colors takes a trained eye to reproduce the layers as they appear on the animal. In her studio, Robinson has multiple bins of wool strands in every shade of black, brown, white and red. She painstakingly pushes wisps of fibers, just a few at a time into the base portrait to begin sculpting the animal’s fur. She snips and sculpts around the eyes and other features where needed and faithfully renders the animal’s image, adding whiskers and other elements. The end result is often astonishing to the people who commission her portraits.

“Sometimes they think it is a painting and sometimes they cry, especially if the animal has passed on,” she told me in a recent interview.

The talented artist was a crafter as a child, and then when her daughter was born prematurely, she needed something to pass the time while she watched over her. She discovered the Zentangle Method, a way to create images by drawing structured patterns. In 2010 she became a certified Zentangle teacher and one of her designs was included in the book, “The Beauty of Zentangle,” by certified Zentangle teachers Suzanne McNeill, and Cindy Shepard.

After a foray into acrylic painting, Robinson discovered felt painting and began to study with Sophie Wheatley of the United Kingdom, as well as Dani Ives and Seraphina from the U.S. Her first project was a portrait of two pomeranians.

Part of the appeal of felting, she said, “is that I can find all of the materials I need locally.” In fact, she is a frequent customer of Living Felt in Dripping Springs, a felting supply company that offers workshops, classes and tutorials.

In her day job, she is a preschool teacher but you may know her from classes that she taught at the Wimberley Village Library and Fabric Frenzy, where she was a manager. Today she looks forward to the day she can secure a studio in Wimberley. To find out more, contact her at michellerobinsonartist@ gmail.com.