An East Tennessee man creates portraits of pets that are a little non-traditional.
He's a graphic designer who dabbles in doodles and sculptures and paintings.
Mike Taylor turned that hobby into a fine art cartoon business he calls Doodlewags.
"Doodle is just kind of what I do and then the wags is the dog part so we just mashed the two together and came up with Doodlewags," he said.
One painting features a dog wearing a cape flying after a tennis ball. He calls it Super Fetch.
"The tennis ball is just out of his reach so that's my favorite one," Taylor said.
But it's not his only one.
His painting show dogs in fun situations from playing guitar, to singing a song, to riding with the wind in their fur.
He's always liked making art but decided to put more time into it after a health scare 5 years ago.
"In 2007 I was diagnosed with Leukemia," he said.
He went through chemotherapy and a stem cell transplant.
"My signature, my name is Mike, so the 'e' in my signature is a green ribbon which signifies a stem cell transplant survivor," he said.
He kept some of his paintings in his hospital room to keep up his spirits and they made people at the hospital laugh. That reaction inspired him to expand his Doodlewags efforts.
"I count it as a blessing because God has blessed me so much by going through that experience," he said.
Five years later, Mike Taylor has dozens of paintings at his in-home studio in Knoxville and has sold many more on the internet and at shows.
"When we're at a show people walk by and they just smile and that's really the reward I get out of it," he said.
He creates some paintings purely out of his imagination and he creates others from photos of actual pets.
"The first guy I did had two labs and he had a ski boat, he took them on a ski boat so we had his labs going for a joy ride in a ski boat," he said.
Brewster and Norman are his family's rescue dogs and inspirations for some of his paintings.
Chasing tennis balls? That's an activity they could enjoy all day.
"The reason I picked dogs is because they just make me smile and they're just happy to see me. My cat couldn't care less if I showed up. But I do have one painting of a dog juggling cats if that counts," he said with a laugh.
Doodlewags is all about the laughter.