And still more on Cinder

This was my work on Cinder yesterday. Not a lot, I think - it was one of those days when I don't feel sure of my concentration, so I focussed on small, straightforward things. Some of these were filling in her front paws; starting the pink stripe of the blanket; a little more work on a hind paw.

She's reaching the point where I'm starting to be able to envision her finished (sorry, I start referring to the painting as if it's the dog herself), but I have no idea how much longer she'll take. Could be next week; could be three weeks, could be six weeks... More likely still is that with another week or two of work, she'll have reached the point of being "almost finished," which is likely to mean another two or three sessions, doing little fiddling things; sitting and staring at the painting, listening to the feeling of what's right and what's not quite there yet; putting it away, going away for a few days, coming back and looking again; turning my back on it and then whirling around suddenly, trying to take it by surprise (don't laugh, it actually helps). (Of course, it's actually my own vision of it that I'm trying to take by surprise - anything to try to see it afresh.)

More on Cinder

Here's Cinder's progress as of yesterday. I've worked on her face; I'm happy with her developing look; and more of her body is getting smoothed out, and her tail. I have noticed that I really need some orange in her, not just some mixture of earth colors - burnt or raw sienna, yellow ochre, even Indian red - but real, honest to gosh vermilion red plus cadmium yellow, as a base, to get that real warm sunny color on her flank.

I also shifted the color of the condos out the window, from their previous greenish, to more of a gray, and I think the whole scene is looking sunnier - though maybe that's because I shadowed the intersections of the window pane frames...

The Break in the Forest

Here's another painting from my existing body of work: The Break in the Forest. This includes one of the whippets that my daughter and her best friend used to walk - Basil; and an owl; and an almost invisible shimmer in the air. And Basil and the owl are both wearing medicine paint, including a tiny hand print on Basil that indicates the very small size of his rider (it could also mean that he's very large, but I'm arbitrarily saying that's not the case).

This is a watercolor, 14" x 20", and is available for sale, unframed, for $600 plus shipping.

And more on Cinder

Here's how she's looking now. I've done more of her body color, started work on the pillow and her favorite stuffed animal - Foofer - and worked a bit more on the scene outside the window.

It's coming, it's coming... I'm having fun with Foofer. I love including stuffed animals with my real animals!

More on Cinder

I haven't been posting as often as I intended to, but here's the state Cinder's portrait had reached as of a couple of weeks ago. I found myself surprised that Cinder's body color needed to be fairly pinkish - even though I knew my beginning colors were way brighter than they should end up. I painted this color on her body, thinking, "Nah, that can't be right..." Then walked away; and a few days later, just glancing at the painting as I walked by, thought, "Yeah - I think that's going in the right direction, after all!" So it goes...

I also worked on the light and shadow of the window seat, and did some work on the window frames. I'm liking how luminous the shadows are looking.

Horse Wash, renamed, sort of finished

Here's the title: Ponderosa Morning: After the Bath. There are some things I still want to fuss with, but it's all but done, and has been photographed and submitted for the Art at the Classic show.

Horse Wash - in progress 6

This is how it looked at the end of the day yesterday. The horse's head and mane are roughed in, and I think I brightened the sunlit dust and some of the other patches of sun. I've forgotten a blue wagon I wanted to put in; that, and finishing up his head, and fiddling with some other little things, will be today's work, which I better get started on.

Horse Wash - in progress 5

This is the painting, after most of the fifth painting session, yesterday. The tree and the pole are largely done, the sunlit dust and the ground; and the horse is mostly pretty-much-done, except for his head and mane. Even when it's "done," though, I'll want to fiddle with some things.

Horse Wash - I have to rename this - in progress #4

Okay. I have to rename this painting. I have realized this horse was not at the horse wash, which has cement floor and sides, and, I think, metal pipe tie-up, as well as, of course, a hose sort of thing. I think it will be Fairground Morning, or maybe Morning Among the Pines - even though I suspect it was no longer morning. But it looks like morning to me, and I like the idea.

This was the fourth session of painting, on Thursday (May 30). I've done more on the horse, and have one more tree trunk and part of the pole to do, as well as the sunlit dust around the horse's feet and some other stuff.

Horse Wash - in progress 3

And more - the background is developing...

Horse Wash - in progress 2

First real color going on...

Continuing with Cinder

So now I've just begun to put some color in Cinder's portrait. I started with the windows, the view through them basically a nice soft gray green; some trees, a bit of parking lot, and a grey condominium across the way. (Yes, I know, I spelled grey/gray two different ways. Generally I think of gray as a harder, colder color than grey, which to me is softer and gentler. So I guess when it's mixed with green, it's a harder gray to start with, whereas when it's these plain grey buildings, I don't want them harsh and industrial looking...) Also, I know, they look like pretty much the same color right now. That will change - a little bit.

Then, I started fooling around in Cinder's body with a yellowy gold. I think this will be a good under-color, and I'm interested what kind of a light it will cast once it's covered up.

And finally, there's the beginning of some shadow color around the pillow, just for fun.

New horse painting underway

Here in Grass Valley, we have a Draft Horse Classic at the Fairgrounds every year, for four days in September, and I love it. Big, beautiful horses, pulling carriages and wagons - farm wagons, freight wagons, old fire wagons; threading logs among trees, in the log skid, and pulling a sled piled with bags of feed in the weight pull.

Every year, along with the Classic, there's a show of horse art called "Art at the Classic." Being a lifetime horse lover, I was in heaven when I found this show, especially because the quality of the art was high. I started drawing and painting horses when I was very young, under six, and drew them almost exclusively until, somewhere in junior high, I starting branching out. I began exploring human faces and dogs and cats, and found that dogs and cats weren't built the same way as horses. Meanwhile, though, I could practically draw horses in my sleep, and whenever I wanted to try a new medium or a new technique, I'd do a horse; it was so easy that I didn't have to think about it, and I could just play with the new approach.

So, as soon as I saw the Art at the Classic show, I knew I wanted to try to get a painting of my own into it.

Here I am finally, four years later, working on a piece to enter. This horse was tied at the horse wash, amid the tall Ponderosa pines of the fairgrounds, with the sun shining through the dust.



This is oil on canvas, 30" x 38". The first thing I did, after transferring my drawing to canvas, was to paint it all blue and green. The horse is actually black, so blue as an underpainting makes sense to me for the horse, but I can't really explain why I decided to do it all in blue and green to start; I just felt like it.

Cinder: the beginnings of the painting stage

Cinder is a boxer mix whose portrait I'm working on, as a couple's gift to their son and his wife. I'm using a photo of Cinder in a window seat, full of light, with a neat pillow, and two of Cinder's stuffed animals, including her favorite (and mine too, I think): Foofer, the blue one (the one on the right - I know, I know, you can hardly see the stuffed animals at all at this point). This will be oil on canvas, 14" x 20".

This (above) shows the drawing transferred to the canvas, and Cinder, her stuffed animals, and the pillow outlined in sepia. Behind her, you can faintly see outlines of the windowpanes, and the shadows on the window seat. This is how the charcoal transfer looked after I traced the drawing (below) onto the canvas. As it was so hard to see, I painstakingly went over the lines with the sepia, keeping the original drawing right behind the canvas, as reference. Here (below) is the drawing:


And this is an enhanced photo of the drawing (same photo, but with the lines brought out):



Here's what it looked like, with the drawing taped up behind my canvas, as I was painting in the lines:

This is my new art blog

Hey hey hey! What I plan to do here: post photos of works in progress (WIP's), state my plans and intentions, say whether I've carried them out and what I plan to do next about it, upload, post and admire paintings and stuff from my existing body of work, and grab links from WIP's and finished pieces to add to posts on Fine Art America (FAA) and other places. Hey hey hey!

It's almost 12:30 at night, and I've been spending some time, when I wasn't painting, obsessing on FAA's site, lately: checking out, commenting, posting... I need to go to bed, and I have a nice Jane Austen to curl up with and fall asleep to, since Paul's away (that's also why I've gotten away with staying up SOOO late). Made salad tonight, so I need to wash the salad bowl. Maybe I'll post on my blabbing blog soon about how I usually don't wash all the dishes after dinner, but salad bowls need to be done right away.

So. Tomorrow I want to change the bed, take out recycling (before the pile falls over), and do Jo Kata. I also need to start digging holes for two fig trees and a plum tree, and plant them. First, before bed, I think I'll add one of my favorite paintings. Which one shall it be? I think Reagan.


Okay, here's Reagan; I'll probably change the picture later, as I think it needs cropping, but for now it's okay. Lovely Reagan. (5/19: I have changed the picture to the trimmed version.)

Info about Reagan: Reagan's portrait is a watercolor, 20" x 29", done in 2000. Prints of her portrait are available on-demand on Fine Art America (see links).