It's funny how different it is to work in a space you are not used to. My studio is a small room in my basement where I have great lighting (two lights attached to my easel) and one small window. Most people would not be inspired but I think of it as the opposite of the "French Garret", mine is below ground instead of above. I took a picture and several orbs appeared so, I think maybe I even have angel helpers. Last week I watched a friend's studio and shop while she was gone. I thought maybe a different environment would be a good change. Her space has large windows and lots of natural light, I was there for 2 hrs. each day for 4 days. The first day I drew and sketched and that went quite well. The next day I began a painting and putzed with it for the next two days. I still have work to do on it but, I think I actually felt homesick for my little underground garret. Odd really the grass, so to speak, or the light is not always greener on the other side. Our comfort zone is where we like to work.
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Okay off to a great start in the New Year! Taking on the big tasks and crossing them off the list! Got the Hood in my kitchen degreased, excellent! Next cleaning the fridge! Things are moving along. I am studio sitting for a friend this week and painting there, this should be a good exercise in working in a new area. My brother and nephew are coming out to ski next week, putting the house in order and cooking stuff, fun fun! My Dog Quail and I are really getting into Therapy work this week, two and a half visits this week. De-stressing students at the High School, National Abilities center visit and checking out visiting at an assisted living facility in Heber. This should be a fun and energizing week! Nothing like an up coming entry for a show to really push me to work. Luckily I have had some paintings kicking around in my mind for awhile and this gave me the impetus to get them done.
Not sure why pressure makes us work harder? The ideas are there, one of these pieces has been bouncing around in my brain since this time last year. Maybe I just needed the time to let the images gel in my mind in order to let them out for the world to see. Hopefully one of these will make it into the show. I can only submit 2 works, after that we'll see where things go. I was filling bird feeders, it's been quite cold and the poor little things are hungry. We have one bird feeder that is continually emptied more so than I thought it should be. I have filled and refilled the feeders, this one especially. It doesn't seem to matter whether it is late afternoon or early morning when it is filled it is always empty the next morning. I had convinced myself, that it was grackles or magpies just emptying it.
Last week there were 3 deer inside the fenced area of our yard, course the fence is only 4 ft. tall so no trouble for deer to hop over. Two of the deer looked like they were younger than the 3rd one possibly fawns last spring. I kept watching and after a bit they began to chase each other around my back yard the way the dogs do. (kicking myself for not having my camera close.) They ran through the trees all 3 of them and leaped in the air straight up. they did this for a good 5-7 minutes, one of them would go over and shake it's head at the others or poke them with it's nose and then off the the two would go. Eventually they jumped the fence and took off. The one suspiciously emptied bird feeder is just outside the fence. About 8ish at night or so, way to late for feathered friends to be raiding the bird feeder the dogs started barking, so I grabbed a spotlight and went to investigate. Now mind you I didn't see any deer but the dogs were looking right at the bird feeder barking and there were fresh deer tracks below and around it. I know circumstantial evidence but, one of these days I may get them with my camera. With the new year. Comes the freshness of new beginnings and changes from the old and stale year. We want to do better, do more, eat less, exercise more, be a better person, do more of what is expected..... or not! Life throws many curve balls at us. Things turn out not as we expect them to. People do things we cannot imagine why. We persevere and keep pushing forward, if we are lucky we do better than we thought we would, we improve, even just a little, people around us seem to smile more. I want not to dwell on bad, sad, evil, terrible things that I can't do anything about, but move forward and hopefully make things a bit brighter if possible. I read somewhere on the internet, now come on everything is written somewhere on the internet, honest. ;) That the best way to look at life differently is take a large jar, no now listen not a jar for money when you cuss, uh uh, a jar that whenever something good happens to make you smile, or even cheer you write it on a piece of paper and put it in the jar. Then on New Year's Eve you read all the good things that happened over the last year making you focus on good rather than bad. Hey it couldn't hurt, really, it couldn't hurt, and it just might make one's attitude better. What a concept to focus on the good and happy moments and not dwell on the sad and unhappy ones. So here is my jar and now I will begin to fill it with HAPPY! (Just a note, I am not a Pollyanna, but isn't light better than darkness? Mayhaps we should gallop towards the light! )
The second is a painting I want to enter in an exhibit that is coming up, at our local zoo. The Curious Badger. I hope to complete two more images for this show as well The 3rd painting is one that I did for a friend that recently lost her senior dog, "Grandma Greta". I wrote a post awhile ago about a painting that I was doing for some clients, and how they didn't like it at all after telling me to do whatever I wanted. Here is the rest of the story. When I emailed them telling them the painting was finished and asking for feedback, I absentmindedly forgot to attach the picture of the painting. My email's have a portrait in the signature line of a blue merle aussie that I had for many years. My clients saw this and thought that was how I painted the dog but never described it to me. I was having trouble getting in touch with them as they were in the process of closing on a house and moving. After reaching them they said the dog they wanted painted had brown eyes not blue and the face was mostly black. I asked them to send more pictures and tell me which they liked best. One of the pictures they sent was one I already had on file the one I painted. I went to my clients office and explained I was confused. I also took the painting I had done along for clarification. He really liked the painting and asked me to get it ready for shipping. By the time I returned home, he had several other requests. Below are the visuals for all to see. I will think about this painting and remember it is not always the case when people say, we love what you do feel free to do what you think is best. I had trouble getting in touch with my clients of my current painting. But they had assured me they loved my work, I had painted their dog last year and they wanted a painting of their aunt's dog as a gift for her. They sent me 5 or 6 shots and said do what you think is best she is hard to get pictures of. I sent updates but never heard anything back. I would normally have stopped work on the painting till I received a response but given the fact that they said, do whatever I proceeded, oops! I sent pics of the finished painting today to 3 different email addresses as I wasn't sure why I had 3 email addresses but assumed one of them would get a response. The reply was, gosh this really doesn't look like her, sorry we never received your other updates, actually my wife loves it but, it just doesn't look like her to me. So chalk it up to experience, animal portraits need to be what the client thinks is right! Back to the easel.
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I am a painter of animals. There has always been a connection for me and this is how I share it.Archives
January 2024
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